FBI boss says COVID-19 'most likely' escaped from lab Days after it emerged that the US Department of Energy deemed the COVID-19 pandemic to have sprung from a lab incident, FBI director Chris Wray says that the bureau agrees. Without China's complete cooperation – easier said than done – the virus's true origin will remain impossible to lock down, but qualified (and less …
Sceptical? Bloody conspiracy theorist.
Next you'll be saying that masks don't work, the lockdowns were not much use and the vaccines are a bit shit. What else, school children had to wear masks in England because it would look bad if Scotland had already done it, even though they knew it wouldn't do much good? Get out of here.
All things that would have got you kicked off social media platforms last year. So, I won't be saying any of that.
It depends on the masks too, of course. The non N95 masks being sold at every corner shop were of marginal use, but they helped the economy by causing people to buy them.
...and caused untold damage to the environment.
BTW, regarding N95 masks, even after making them mandatory Austria saw no change to the trajectory of its COVID waves.
If you want a 'citation', go and look for yourself! You could start witht he recent Cochrane review by Tom Jefferson et al. You could also look at the infection / death stats for each country (available from various sources), and compare these with the timing of face-nappy mandates.
If face nappies worked there would be a clear correlation (and if it was just the N95 ones, the correlation would be particularly noticeable in the countries which specifically mandated those). Fact is, there is no such correlation - they simply don't work. None of them.
"face nappies"
You are going to get so downvoted for that :)
Masks alone do not help, you need the proper training and discipline to follow correct infection control procedures. Or is all just for show.
And remember every pack of those blue plastic chin diapers says they do not protect against viral infections.
> You could start witht he recent Cochrane review by Tom Jefferson et al.
... which itself concludes "The high risk of bias in the trials, variation in outcome measurement, and relatively low adherence with the interventions during the studies hampers drawing firm conclusions."
How about these studies, which all appear to show a correlation between mask wearing and lower Covid-19 incidence?
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7106e1.htm
The first two are observational studies, and the third has been discussed in many places and also involved behavioural changes, so none of them can exactly be said to prove much.
But of course it's easy to cherry-pick studies whcih appear to show your preferred viewpoint, which is why I pointed to the cochrane review as that's a rigorous meta-analysis. And why I suggested looking at the data across multiple countries, because that avoids getting the result you want by cherry picking a small number of countries.
Jefferson's point is that it's impossible to remove all bias, but the review shows no evidence that masks are effective (and of course it's normally difficult to 'prove' a negative). So in the absence of evidence that they do work, despite the massive use of them, the only conclusion can be that they don't. Those who argue 'you aren't holding it right' rather miss the point that this is the real world, not a controlled lab environment. They are rather like those who insist that communism works but has never been tried properly yet because all the countries that have adopted it haven't done it properly.
Frankly, you can keep your droplets for yourself. Masks working or not, just use them when you have to (which isn't many places nowadays anyway).
The "I'm so exceptional that I don't have to wear face nappies when everyone else takes precautions" is just obstinate childishness and entitlement. You can watch such Karens on Youtube if you want.
"also involved behavioural changes,"
On the other hand, if those behavioural changes helped people understand a little more about the situation and helped, then who can say if those same behavioural changes could have been achieved by other means? Actually wearing a mask may or may not have been helpful, but the behavioural changes that mask wearing caused does seem to have helped.
"but the behavioural changes that mask wearing caused does seem to have helped."
Which behavioural changes would those be? Causing children to have negative behavioural changes due to masks producing a poor learning environment and the stresses of being forced to wear something that they do not understand? Or maybe the behavioural change where you turn into a smug insufferable know-it-all prat who is now morally superior to those around you?
The sunflower lanyards were great. No mask, nothing they could do to make you wear one and the aforementioned prats would scurry out of the way.
My observation is that before the mask mandate people actually tried to keep their distance and we had the 1 in 1 out occupancy limits on shops. After the mask mandate it was like the majority of people were now wearing an invincible shield and they could behave as they wanted.
ok, perhaps it's not just paper. They can be picked up from the ground, however, easily using a litter picker.
There's a lot of littering in the UK. Personally I think dog poo bags being left by morons who can't be bothered to take their own dogshit home with them is a lot worse.
They are made of "blown plastic fibres" i.e. plastic stretched by hot air into fine strings, overlaid and fused to form a cloth-like mesh. The same type of stuff that the cheapest of wet-wipes are made of. There is no paper content whatsoever in the majority of "blue covid masks" as far as I am aware. Try heating one with a flame - the plastic immediately melts and shrinks back. If it were paper it would smoulder.
It's not just plastic pollution of the kind that can be picked up with a litter picker that they cause, it's microplastics too. As they degrade, the plastic fibres break up and spread all over the damn place. Never going away, only getting smaller. Microplastics are finding their way into people's bloodstreams, it's unclear what their health risks are, but they are unlikely to be any good for us.
Yeah, it's all a conspiracy theory!
No matter how many of the things which "conspiracy theorists" have been saying for several years are now at last accepted by the mainstream, the devout will never accept that the approved narrative is not always true. And of course equating everything with the more extreme views is one of their common tactics.
Yeah, yeah - heard it all before. Another favourite from the Covidian playbook. Anyone who doesn't follow the nonsensical and ever-changing pointless and ineffective rules to "keep people" safe is "selfish", a "granny killer", etc...
Strangely, they don't apply the same logic to the clear and measurable harms casued by the Holy Covidian Rituals - e.g. the difficulties caused by face nappies to deaf people, autistics, abuse survirors, etc. Or the harm caused to kids by massively disrupted education.
Looks like you are stuck in early 2020, and heaven't learned a thing since then.
Anyway, so when you have to sneeze or couch, and sit at a table with others (let's just assume this is possible) you just sneeze or cough right over the table?
That would be the sensible thing to do using your logic.
I've been droning on about Deus Ex a lot recently.. (the original that is, not the crappy sequels) But for a PC game story derived from 90s conspiracy theories from Usenet et al, it has turned out rather ominously prescient..
It's premise is: At some point in the not-so-distant future, a shadowy organisation of corporate leaders (the sorts of people who might meet up for drinks and canapes at Davos) is now in control of the United Nations, the US government, and has just installed a new director at FEMA. You begin the game as an Anti-Terrorist operative working for the UN.
It predicted:
"Why contain it? Let it spill over to the schools and churches. Let the bodies pile up in the streets. In the end, they'll beg us to save them..."
It was only a game, made by a humble game studio in 1999, so how did it end up predicting the future? Maybe because some of the "whackjob conspiracy theories" that it was based on, turned out to be true..
Just because something is a conspiracy theory doesn't automatically make it false.
Here where I live covid more or less became a non issue after we stopped fighting off immunity with all these draconian rules. I think the communists (still a thing in South Africa) tried to cease power but luckily failed – too many well informed citizens about for such a plot to succeed.
The alcohol purchasing laws in South Africa are already draconian and arbitrary which is weird for a country that produces some of the best wine in the world. Which is like Britain having weird harsh laws governing the sale of cheddar cheese. Covid just tipped an already fucked situation further over the cliff. Covid isn't to blame for anything out in South Africa. It's been in decline out there for decades. Under investment (more money silently leaving the country than coming in), corruption (really dodgy government officials), shitty education system (you can't trust MATRIC out there because the results have been fudged in the past to arbitrarily increase the pass rate), finger pointing etc etc...seriously amazing wine though!
Ok, I'll bite...
103,000 is just the "official" death count...how many people died on townships that you don't know about that didn't make the official count? How many died that were in ZA illegally and had no access to testing or care? That never visited a hospital or even have access. The townships have their own way of dealing with the dead and disease and typically have very little access to healthcare. How many people died of covid, but weren't recorded as such because they carried another disease like TB?
I would imagine it is crazy difficult to get an actual deaths figure for covid in ZA. Especially given that there are lots of ways to skew the stats...did that person die of TB or was it the covid infection that got them? As an outsider, I don't even know how covid deaths were recorded there...here in the UK, you would be recorded as a covid death, even if you died of something else but also happened have covid at the time. Why? Because that is erring on the side of caution...it's also why deaths were referred to as "covid related" and not straight up "yup it was covid"...because in a lot of cases it was incredibly hard to determine. Therefore, it was better to report that covid was involved, but not necessarily the cause...it makes the stats look worse, but at least not as dangerous as the stats looking too good.
I am married to a South African, and her uncle ended up in hospital with covid on an ICU ward with 12 people...he was the only one to get out alive. He's not the only person to have told me about situations like this. The actual experiences I've heard don't line up with the official numbers at all.
None of this detracts from South Africa being an amazing country. I'm blown away every time I go there. But man, when someone quotes unbelievable statistics to me out there, I take them as just that...unbelievable.
The most telling thing here is the number of facts that get downvoted. i.e. there is a certain demographic that abhors the truth and loves blatant lies.
What is also a joke is that some people actually contradict themselves and also prove they are telling lies.
Personally, I can't find any problems with the rules that were set. I followed all the rules (except for travel, I still moved around a bit, because I had to) and I never caught covid, to this day I've never had covid. I was a "key worker" and so still moved around a bit for work, and yet...never caught covid. Plenty of people around me caught covid, but I didn't. I have no idea though whether it was because I properly followed the rules or whether my blood type (which is kinda rare and resistant to certain conditions and viruses) came into play...nothing was ever published really about natural resistance...I'd love to see some studies on that...but alas, everything had to be doom and gloom the whole time.
I think in general this sort of information would be useful for any future pandemics, so that we can have some sort of idea of who might be resistant to the virus du jour to enable better people management and perhaps put less vulnerable people in positions that would help to reduce the impact of an onslaught.
> whether my blood type ... came into play...nothing was ever published really about natural resistance...but alas, everything had to be doom and gloom the whole time.
You should be thankful; what do you think would have happened if people realised you were walking around with pints of anti-Covid in your veins?
...nothing was ever published really about natural resistance...I'd love to see some studies on that...but alas, everything had to be doom and gloom the whole time.
Everything had to be 'managed'. Do as we say, not as we do. Wear your mask. Get your jab. Obey, citizen.
Such is politics. We still don't really know the origins of Covid, but now we have the essential element of a conspiracy theory, the official denial. Well, following the previous official denial that it was the wet market, not the coronavirus research lab across the road. The DoE and FBI have now been banned from Facebook and Twitter for spreading 'fake news' and 'misinformation'. Which they may still be doing because politicians are upping the pressure on China.
It's a funny old world.
As for studies on natural resistance, they're coming. Problem is research is complicated, especially medical research and needs funding and access to data. Much of that data is obviously personally sensitive. But the US may have just done something to help. Or create new conspiracies. So some vaccine refuseniks took to calling themselves 'Purebloods'. I guess in a medical research sense, they're more a control group, or in parts of Hollywood, a placebo group. Turns out celeb docs were selling fake vaccination certificates to celebs who were pro-Covid in public, but anti-vaccine in private. But I digress. Now, the 'Purebloods' can be officially coded as "Z28.310" in their medical records.
So now researchers could pull up a list of the '310s who were never vaccinated and compare to people who were and see if there's any correlation between blood types, pre-existing conditions etc etc. I guess it'd also be possible to correlate positive Covid test results to vaccination status and admissions to make some educated guesses wrt natural vs artificial immunity, or even potential side effects. But that will all take time and money to determine if there are any statistically significant correlations. I'm also aware of a few projects that are reviewing mortality data to better understand the difference between 'deaths from' and 'deaths with' codiings that were used, that probably exagerated the threat of Covid.
So there's still a lot that we don't know, and a lot that seems to have been deliberately confused by the liberal application of FUD. Stuff like Ivermectin is still called 'horse pills' by some, even though it's a very widely used human anti-parasitic medicine that's saved a lot of lives. I've been following research on that one and it still doesn't seem very clear if that one has any effect at all, or if it does, why? But memes are like viruses, and both are still in the wild. Covid still remains a threat to people's health, we're just getting a better idea who, how and why. Memes are still a threat (don't try bleaching your blood) but at least some won't get you exiled into social media black holes any more.
There's also the wider impact on public health, like trust in politicians, the media and science. The good'ol Bbc used to run stories insisting the Wuhan lab leak theory was 'fake news', now they're reporting the FBI story without adding a 'fact check'.. Because their previous 'fact checking' may obviously have been flawed.
Just because something is put on that Nature article site, doesn't mean it's been published in Nature nor reviewed. That article was retracted.
Ivermectin turned out to be a dead end. Literally. I know many in India that it failed for. One theory was that it helped people who had underlying parasitic infestations plus Covid.
I think it was an earlier article that was withdrawn. There is quite a lot of investigation into the interaction with the spike protein. I know there was a lot of pressure to ensure no other therapies were available apart from those from Pfizer. Given the ungodly profits made by Pfizer and Moderna it would not surprise me if there was suppression of alternatives. You see quite a few adverts for vitamin D and its benefit for your immune system now but 18 months ago it was 'useless'.
Don’t remember Vitamin D being “useless”, but do remember it being rated as boosting the immune system so enable the body to better combat CoViD but it wouldn’t stop you contracting CoViD, hence it was not a substitute for a ‘vaccine’ or treatment.
As for the “ungodly profits”, there was a really good article in the Guardian which set up to do an exposé of this profiteering but instead showed just how many of the companies involved in vaccine production had finally made a profit after years of loses.
>Given the ungodly profits made by Pfizer and Moderna
On this we can agree, OtherAC. I'm not BigPharma apologist. But I'm also not too happy about this AntiVaxx/Extreme-Right/Wellbeing/Conspiracy alliance and radicalisation that seems to have occured in the lead-up to, and during, the Covid pandemic. It has left a big scar across the world. On top of the disease itself.
I still find it very odd that anti-vaxx and wellbeing is now 'far right'. 30+ years ago (man I'm old!) it was the hippy CND member, weed, granola and carob munchers who were all for the natural healing type stuff.
Now the far left is dominated by the chronically unhealthy land whales, big business lovers, authoritarians and war mongers.
What I will say is that all the govt bullshit and overreach has redpilled some of my friends.
"Everything had to be 'managed'. Do as we say, not as we do. Wear your mask. Get your jab. Obey, citizen."
Bit of a drama queen?
It was a pandemic. You live in a society. Get it?
"Do as we say, not as we do."
That's a deduction, not an actual instruction. We have shit politicians at the moment in UK. Not exactly news. But if you think you don't need to follow the rules for that reason, what would that make you? (As bad as them? Stupid? Selfish?)
"It was a pandemic. You live in a society. Get it?"
It was a cold, for most people.
And all the draconian measures to "keep people safe" caused massive damage and didn't achieve any of the things that were claimed for them. And they were contrary to all previous accepted medical responses for respiratory viruses.
"It was a cold, for most people."
Can you read and understand statistics? Hospitalisations? Deaths? Heard of long Covid?
Do you think you can understand the world by only observing your immediate surrounding? (So something like 7 million have to die in the UK before your lightbulb moment arrives.)
You really don't seem very intelligent. Or you live in a constant conspiracy bubble?
You do know that the average age of a person who died 'with covid' was pretty much that of the average life expectancy h in both the UK and US.
Thanks to awful advice from the WHO in 2020 many people were put onto ventilators far too early and died.
In the US hospitals were paid by the govt for every 'covid' patient and got even more when they ventilated them. The old saying 'when all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail' fits very well here.
And now we are experiencing a large number of excess deaths that are not covid related.
Indeed - and the only really meaningful stats are the excess deaths ones, as the of/with Covid stats could be and were massively gamed to up the numbers. Many of those people died of something else and just happened to "test positive", or would have died around the same time or soon afterwards anyway (e.g. those with advanced terminal cancer).
Plus, as you say, there is the issue of inappropriate use of ventilators, and the same applies to other treatment protocols - these are certain to have increased excess deaths, but due to the obscuring of the stats it's impossible to say by how much.
So called "long Covid" is post-viral syndrome which can happen after many viral infections. And the scale of the problem is being massively exaggerated.
As regards the current excess deaths, it's a total mystery. What an earth could possibly be causing it? Anyone making the obvious suggestion is of course a "conspiracy theorist"...
Let us not forget all the people who desperately needed hospital treatment during 2020-2022 for conditions such as cancer and other things that needed timely diagnosis and treatment who have been ignored. Also people who ended up in hospital for more mundane reasons but due to the fixation on covid didn't get proper treatment and suffered harm or even died from totally avoidable problems.
Anyone old enough to remember yuppie flu? The thing we now call Long covid has been around for a LONG time.
All who died more than 28 day after being diagnosed with Covid were excluded from the statistics.
UK's useless government had an interest in minimising the figures to make them look less useless.
In the current news we can read how the moron Hancock ignored expert advice and made up his own mind to send people from hospitals into care homes without testing. And a working testing regime was about a week away, if he had listened to advice. That's the kind of idiots we have ruling this nation.
> All who died [from covid?] more than 28 day after being diagnosed with Covid were excluded from the statistics.
And all who died from some other unrelated cause within 28 days of testing for covid were included in the statistics.
Those two probably balance quite evenly tbh..
If anything, it may more than balance.. I bet a lot of deaths e.g. among the weak and elderly may have been caused by stress and panic, for example.
That's a deduction, not an actual instruction. We have shit politicians at the moment in UK. Not exactly news. But if you think you don't need to follow the rules for that reason, what would that make you? (As bad as them? Stupid? Selfish?)
Nope, it's an observation. Science generally relies on those. So yes, we have shit politcians. That's one observation. In evidence I offer the way they blindly trusted models. Or the way they ignored their own advice and were caught breaking masking, distancing and travel restrictions they'd imposed on us. In further evidence, I offer TV and other media images of politicians and other leaders wearing masks, but leaving their noses uncovered. I deduce from this that politicians either have a poor understanding of the respiratory system, or the real reason for mask mandates was so we couldn't see their lips moving, and thus their lies.
We have subsequently learned that the evidence for much of the policy was poor, thus the decision making was relying on bad information and a bit of a clusterfunk. That's the danger of taking the 'Precautionary Principle' too far, especially when most of our politicians are pretty clueless and have no experience outside of getting a PPE and politics. Same is also true of the media, who don't understand the science, but just run with whatever the 'experts say..' and then 'fact check' and censor on the same basis.
Again, people wonder why trust in both politicians and the media is at a record low, despite the best efforts of the Totalitarian.. I mean Trusted News Initiative.
As to what it makes me? I'd say an individual that enjoys living in a free society, with the ability to make my own choices based on the best available evidence. You know, that basic democracy stuff that people like George Orwell warned us about losing. Politicians, the media and some 'scientists' are doing their usual routine of looking for other people to hold accountable. So blaming their own incredibly bad decisions on 'bad advice' rather than their own fear, ignorance, or possibly profit motives. That's bad for both society, and science. During the climate 'debate', scientists have often warned (see Roger Pielke Jnr) of the dangers of policy-based science vs science based policy.
"As to what it makes me? I'd say an individual that enjoys living in a free society, with the ability to make my own choices based on the best available evidence. "
What a load of bollocks. Presumably you also drive like you wish, in any way you feel like? Own decisions based on "evidence"?
Look, you breath out, others have to breath in what you breath out. You get the hell out of wherever I am if you think you don't have to follow rules. Simple enough? Do you understand the concept of responsibility?
"following the previous official denial that it was the wet market, not the coronavirus research lab across the road."
Well, not quite "across the road". Technically, it's "across the road", but also across quite a few other roads too, then over a fairly large river and then over quite a few other roads. More like a few miles.
"I recall a lot of people being censored for 'misinformation' over this theory." Yes, they were censured for lying not the conspiracy theory. per se I spent a lot of time interacting with said people and those spreading the lies, and none of them had a shred or reasonable proof. No logic. Nothing. They are the gullible ones.
Yes, the lab leak theory is a possibility. But then, so anything averytho9ingA very tenuous one at best, with very low confidence.
What I find telling is that the ones pushing the lab leak theory are also flat earthers, evolution and AGW deniers, Putin fanbois and so on. Plus Brexiteers.
Dear downvoter, you do realise that you proved me correct, don't you. Or would you care to prove me incorrect?
I'm not a downvoter. Would be nice to have that as a stat though. I think in my time here, I've downvoted posts probably less than 10 times.
But proof is hard. I think the lab leak theory is more likely. I obviously can't prove that. Correlation doesn't always equal causation. There's an additonal challenge in that theories are interconnected. So 'gain of function' research can mean infecting animals to get it to acquire traits researchers want, but the world doesn't. Nature does much the same thing, just slower and more randomly. Some scientists do seem to think the genetics of Covid show evidence of deliberate manipulation, perhaps having been run through a CRISPR rather than a soup kettle. The US can't really prove it. China could prove it did originate in the lab, but that would be.. awkward. Otherwise they're stuck trying to prove a negative, or find the actual origin. Or maybe they'll retaliate by saying 'yeh, but the US paid for it'.
We live in interesting times.
As for the rest, that's a gross conflation that has actually been used by climate 'science' in a couple of papers by the poorly named 'Skeptical Science' blog, and a chap by the name of Lewandowsky. After people denied their seminal '97%' paper(s) due to their bad science, they came up with a 'Recursive Fury' paper that claimed to correlate climate 'denial' with belief in stuff like fake moon landings, flat earth etc etc. The recursive furries were swiftly denied because the paper was garbage, and the survey it relied on was often completed by climate change 'believers' answering it in the style of 'deniers'. So basically the ground breaking paper proved confirmation bias exists in climate science, just as it does in other fields.
So I'm a climate change sceptic. For much the same reason as I suspect the lab leak. For me, the evidence supports both beliefs. Climate has changed in the past, it'll change in the future. I'll probably get downvotes for that, and called a denier, but that's what happens when science becomes religion.
I'm not a flat earther though. I do like following some of their 'science' because it's strangely fascinating watching them come up with theories of how orbital dynamics work on a flat earth. Or explain why ships sink as they disappear over the articial horizon and hit the render limit. Or why if you fire lasers across flat earth, the beam hits the ground or doesn't hit the receiver at the same height. Or I've just done memorable things like falling out of perfectly serviceable aircraft at a high enough altitude to actually marvel at the Earth's curvature with my own eyes.
" I think the lab leak theory is more likely" Sadly even the FBI states it is low confidence, i.e. it is not likely.
That is what low confidence means,
On the oither hand, the market theory has high confidence.
"So I'm a climate change sceptic" No, you are a denier. And "Climate has changed in the past, it'll change in the future" proves ir beyond doubt.
That is what low confidence means,
Confidence also is often followed by 'tricks'. Or new evidence that allows uncertainty ranges to be narrowed. So when the panicdemic started, governments relied on models. Those predicted millions of deaths. Reality proved the models wrong. Ok, reality also gets a bit more complicated because some of the policies enforced might actually have made a difference. Science is like that, and often continuously evolves as we learn new things, incorporate fresh data and revise our understanding. Again it's why having a control group is handy in getting a better understanding of natural/herd immunity vs jabbing people with experimental vaccines, then analysing the data later in lieu of the normal clinical trials route.
Think of it like Schrödinger's Jab. People are both better and worse off, but we don't know for certain which is the case unless we observe them.
And "Climate has changed in the past, it'll change in the future" proves ir beyond doubt.
Errm.. Nope. There are some reality deniers who do deny the climate has ever been warmer, or colder in the past. They believe in a mythical 'equilibrium' that we somehow perturbed as the Little Ice Age ended, and the Industrial Revolution began. Climate sceptics point out the overwhelming evidence of prior cold and warm periods from past history, deniers, well, deny. Sceptics want to understand what was responsible for those past events, and what, if any difference human activities make. Sceptics might also point out how to produce billions of N95 masks and single-use plastic jabs once the deniers have banned oil exploration and production. I guess we could go back to using glass needles and syringes, or grow lots of rubber trees.. Won't someone think of the carbon offset potential?
(of course for rubber, you may want to vulcanise it, which often requires sulfur, which is often a by-product of the evil fossil fuel industry. Much like the tyres and other components in EVs are.)
So they were (potentially) right for the (definitely) wrong reasons," No. They told lie
"while the people censoring them were (potentially) wrong for the (definitely) right reasons?" No, they were censored for lying, not for pushing the theory.
"Your falsification by association reminds me of Lysenkoism." You did the falsifying sweety.
I clearly stated "Yes, they were censured for lying not the conspiracy theory. per se " Sop grow uyp fffs,m you and all the other downvoters here are the same, you hate the facts and twist evidence.
That seems like a worrying level of certainty about the state of mind of another person (not to mention competing theories) and acceptance of ideology over reality.
Regarding Lysenkoism, perhaps I oversalted the statement to make it flow. I meant that attributing measures of truth to concepts based on their association reminds me of Soviets denying Darwinism because it seemed bourgeoisie. In the end this caused the Holodomor. That's not to say you can't discount the validity of statements based on the source but it's important to distinguish between this and using them to tacitly validate alternatives.
Regarding Lysenkoism, perhaps I oversalted the statement to make it flow. I meant that attributing measures of truth to concepts based on their association reminds me of Soviets denying Darwinism because it seemed bourgeoisie.
Lysenko was probably an Extreme Maga Republican, a conspiracy theorist or denier. Yet at the time and place, he was the Fauci of the day. I am The Science, obey me. And being more politically savvy than scientific, he got the ear of the powers that be. And much like with Coivd, anyone who challenged The Science would be denounced, fired, jailed, or sometimes shot. Our politicians didn't go quite that far, just forced people into expensive quarantine gulags.
I think my favorite example though was WW2 Germany where Jewish maths and physics were denied, because, well, Jewish. All rather sad considering maths and physics are fundamentally neutral ways of expressing our understanding of the world. Some were fortunate enough to flee the Holocaust and advance our knowledge, many sadly were not. What's even worse is some still ignore those lessons of history, so again in climate 'science', some scientists have been denounced simply because they also follow a religion. There have also been frequent calls to punish 'deniers', including charging them with 'ecocide' or other crimes against humanity.
Such are the dangers of confusing science with politics.
What I find telling is that the ones pushing the lab leak theory are also flat earthers, evolution and AGW deniers, Putin fanbois and so on. Plus Brexiteers.
Plus the FBI. Also, note that your falling into several logical fallacies in rejecting perfectly reasonable and logical theories because you don't like some people who agree with them.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/has-the-lab-leak-theory-really-been-disproved/Most serious scientists agree that this virus probably came from bats on the borders of Yunnan and Laos. The question is and always has been: how did the virus get to Wuhan from bats living more than a thousand miles to the south-west, a distance as great as London to Rome?
One possibility is the wildlife trade, but far less wildlife is sold in Wuhan than in Guangdong in southern China, and yet the virus appeared only in Wuhan: where are the other outbreaks among wildlife traders. The other possibility is that it was scientists who brought it to Wuhan. Why do we think this still needs discussing? Here are six good reasons.
1. Wuhan is the site of the most intensive programme of research on SARS-like viruses in the world
2. That programme involved bringing hundreds of SARS-like viruses to Wuhan
3. Most of them were brought by scientists from Yunnan and some from Laos
4. Among those viruses was one that was 96.2 per cent the same as SARS-CoV-2
5. They refuse to open up their database showing what other viruses they brought and they published the results of experiments in which they manipulated the genomes of these viruses in ways that sometimes made them much more infectious
6. They published plans to insert into a SARS-like virus the very kind of genomic sequence that SARS-CoV-2 has and no other SARS-like virus has.
None of this is a smoking gun, but it’s a heck of a coincidence.
Additionally, there were known safety concerns about the Wuhan lab:-
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/14/state-department-cables-warned-safety-issues-wuhan-lab-studying-bat-coronaviruses/What the U.S. officials learned during their visits concerned them so much that they dispatched two diplomatic cables categorized as Sensitive But Unclassified back to Washington. The cables warned about safety and management weaknesses at the WIV lab and proposed more attention and help. The first cable, which I obtained, also warns that the lab’s work on bat coronaviruses and their potential human transmission represented a risk of a new SARS-like pandemic.
Faced with that, my view is that the most likely explanation is an accidental lab leak.
I would also suggest that this will never be proven; China could never admit to this having leaked from a lab because it would be too embarrassing and politically expensive for them. It then follows that an autocratic nation state dedicating it's entire internal security force to ensuring that this remains unproven would have destroyed any definitive proof by now.
"Plus the FBI" I I was talking about the past but even the FBI, for very., very obvious reasons had to state low cred, or did you miss that?
"far less wildlife is sold in Wuhan than in Guangdong" Wuhan is city of around 12 million whereas Guangdong is a province of around 130 million.
I could go on but it seems you are no different to the Flat Earth cult
"Also, note that your falling into several logical fallacies in rejecting perfectly reasonable and logical theories because you don't like some people who agree with them." LOL. Not at all I am simply stating a fact. I have been dealing with such people for a long time.
As I and others continue to clearly state, the lab leak theory is a possibility but it has very, very low level of confidence whereas the crossover theory has a high level. Ridley’s argument is that the evidence pointing to a laboratory origin of COV-2 is so substantial that the burden of proof to demonstrate his theory must be lowered. i.e. he's lying as usual.
Matt Ridley. LOL. The disgraced, lying climate denying Brexiteer,
"What I find telling is that the ones pushing the lab leak theory are also flat earthers, evolution and AGW deniers, Putin fanbois and so on. Plus Brexiteers."
Res[oimse "your falling into several logical fallacies in rejecting perfectly reasonable and logical theories because you don't like some people who agree with them." I didn't, I simply stated they had that belief. I trust you aren't a native English speaker. And what did you do? Cite one such, a proven liar at that. LOL! An AGW denying swivel eyed Brexiteer
"I recall a lot of people being censored for 'misinformation' over this theory. "
I don't recall that? Just being told there was no evidence of that. It was just pure speculation, leading to bad things in moronic-USA.
Pointing fingers speculatively is a bad thing.
"I don't recall that? " Some were censored on "social media" for lying and I believe some real media did censor some of the lies.
It wasn't just the Septics, there were a lot from Aussi and on a couple of science blogs I was on quite a few Brits pushing some amazing fantasies.
University of California virologists id studies that strongly point to the Wuhan animal market as the source, as described in this recent NPR story:
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/02/28/1160162845/what-does-the-science-say-about-the-origin-of-the-sars-cov-2-pandemic
If I have to choose whether to believe the "low confidence" and "moderate confidence" of the FBI and the spook agencies, or the information obtained and analyzed by *actual virologists* and evolutionary biologists who say their conclusions are a near certainty, I'm going to go with the biologists. Who, incidentally, don't have a national-policy axe to grind. They just want to prevent the next pandemic.
I was also wondering why the US Department of Energy was expressing a view, and stumbled across this:
At this point you might be wondering what interest the Energy Department has in such matters, but the agency's remit is wider than its name suggests. As well as overseeing Uncle Sam's nuclear weapons program, some of its national labs also undertake advanced biological research similar to that performed in Wuhan.
which just raises a whole lot more questions.
The article finishes with:
It's incendiary stuff at a time when US relations with China are at a 40-year low.
To which I also ask, "why is that?"
China hasn't changed though. China has always been a dictatorship, but until a couple of years ago America didn't care.
Now it's a problem for some reason.
If that reason is because they're occupying Tibet and Southern Mongolia (which I had never heard of) then for consistencies' sake shouldn't we begin sanctions against Indonesia (for example).
"what interest the Energy Department has in such matters, but the agency's remit is wider than its name suggests. As well as overseeing Uncle Sam's nuclear weapons program, some of its national labs also undertake advanced biological research similar to that performed in Wuhan"
Scary sh*t. Bit like FDA being some kind of police organisation, only scarier.
If they have in their possession some internal Chinese government documents/communication that indicates a coverup related to the lab that might lead them to believe there is something to that theory. Of course it is possible that even China doesn't know the origin for sure, and is just acting to cover up anything related to possible lab leaks in case that's the cause so it wouldn't allow the FBI to assess that with full confidence.
Aside from that, I agree I'll believe the scientists over the government agency, especially since lately it seems like the US is looking for every excuse they can get to say bad stuff about China.
“If they have in their possession some internal Chinese government documents/communication that indicates a coverup..” well if that existed I would expect the FBI to say something a lot more definite.
This whole “gain of function” weaponization research theory doesn’t make any sense. Just making that stuff is a crime against humanity, you’d have to be a psychopath to do it in the first place, there’s no way funding for a disease that threatens all humans on Earth equally can possibly get funding.
Preposterous!
Gain of function research has been happening for decades, and is useful to see how viruses will evolve in the future so we can be prepared for them. If you say "well something bad happened so it should never have been tried" then if the first manned rocket destined for Mars blows up on the pad will you say "we should have known never to try to go to Mars"?
> if the first manned rocket destined for Mars blows up on the pad will you say "we should have known never to try to go to Mars"?
There is a very - very - large difference in scale between that and a virus release. Enough to render that *particular* argument ridiculous.
Not disagreeing that gain of function research has been done, is being done and will continue. Which is a good thing overall, though one really, really hopes that, out side of the movies, nobody is actually enough of a fool to do so in order to "weaponise" a virus.
nobody is actually enough of a fool to do so in order to "weaponise" a virus
Oh I think that has happened without a doubt, and the US, Russia, Israel, North Korea and China would be the most likely candidates. That's a separate issue from gain of function research, as they would want particular attributes in something designed to attack an enemy. I'm sure each would rationalize it as "we need to research what is possible because we know our enemies are doing so".
You'll want something less virulent but significantly more deadly than covid. Something that spreads as well as a coronavirus makes a poor weapon because you couldn't keep it out of your own population in today's global economy unless you are completely shut off from the world like North Korea. Ideally something with less obvious symptoms so it would be difficult or impossible to tell someone is infected via coughing or body temperature so the time from initial infections to figuring out a way to prevent the spread would be too late for a large chunk of the population.
"“If they have in their possession some internal Chinese government documents/communication that indicates a coverup..” well if that existed I would expect the FBI to say something a lot more definite."
Correct, and that is the norm. Thye simple, very, very basic fac they say it is low confidence proves that is not the case. Its propaganda to fool FauxNews disciples.
The statement was "Just making that stuff is a crime against humanity, you’d have to be a psychopath to do it in the first place, there’s no way funding for a disease that threatens all humans on Earth equally can possibly get funding."
So I responded
""This whole “gain of function” weaponization research theory doesn’t make any sense" Did you mention Fort Detrick?"
And got downvoted. Seems some hate the truth.
"Detrick is today one of the world’s cutting-edge laboratories for research into toxins and antitoxins, the place where defenses are developed against every plague, from crop fungus to Ebola. Its leading role in the field is widely recognized. For decades, though, much of what went on at the base was a closely held secret. Directors of the CIA mind control program MK-ULTRA, which used Detrick as a key base, destroyed most of their records in 1973. Some of its secrets have been revealed in declassified documents, through interviews and as a result of congressional investigations. Together, those sources reveal Detrick’s central role in MK-ULTRA and in the manufacture of poisons intended to kill foreign leaders."
"Research into deadly viruses and biological weapons at US army lab shut down over fears they could escape
Fort Detrick researchers banned from working with anthrax, Ebola and smallpox until procedures improved
Tim Wyatt
Tuesday 06 August 2019 13:19"
Just making that stuff is a crime against humanity, you’d have to be a psychopath to do it in the first place, there’s no way funding for a disease that threatens all humans on Earth equally can possibly get funding.
You can't possibly be that naive. Every weapon ever created is an equal threat to enemies, allies and self, alike. Yet weapons research and manufacturing continues, regardless.
Gain of function research is conducted all the time. Has been for years. And it's not just to create weaponised pathogens. Mainly just trying to figure out what future evolutions of something might look like.
@Jimmy2Cows
"You can't possibly be that naive" It is a problem isn;t it. Such people seem totally incapable of joining dots and that is why we have so many problems. The UK had BoJo and Brexit, the USA had IQ45 and has schoolkids murdered on a more or less daily basis. Sad people.
conspiracy theory
{
Well given the track record of the CIA and the known disinformation strategies adopted over the origin of student…
It isn’t beyond the possible that CoViD19 (prototype) was the product of a lab, only a US one… and Wuhan was a long way away and have many attributes that make it a test ground which would help to hide the true origin. Hence the FBI are, pointing the finger at others to direct attention away from what they are actually doing…
}
As others have pointed out it really doesn’t matter, it is only a matter of time before the next pandemic….
Yes, but. If the Norwegian Biathlon Association staged a mass shooting in the US (outside of a school, they are more or less acceptable in schools) people would expect the FBI to have an opinion. And not on PFAS in ski wax, which is presumably what would turn the Norwegian biathletes militant.
Bit of a deflection there. NPR used to be really great but they have seriously lost their way these last few years.
It's no good saying NPR are ok, because Fox News are worse? It's possible that they are both bad, and it doesn't really matter which one is worse does it?
That's a bit like trying to make me eat broccoli, because you don't like Brussels sprouts.
Fox News hasn't reported on their case, claiming it is "on the advice of their lawyers" so their viewers who live in that bubble and don't listen to any other news source have no idea this lawsuit even exists. It looks like a slam dunk win for Dominion thanks to the damning statements from Murdoch on down, and besides the significant damages that result I assume Dominion would ask for an open admission of guilt from Fox that would run every hour for a year to make sure every person who watches that poison learns that they have been lied to for years.
Unfortunately it will probably just result in a lot of viewers fleeing Fox and going to Newsmax or OANN. Trump is already trying to encourage that it seems, because he doesn't want them to learn the truth that no one at Fox ever believed his lies that he won the election. The anchors at those other two networks might be batshit crazy enough to actually believe what they are saying on air, making Dominion's defamation lawsuits against them harder to win.
@Steve Button. What were you saying about clowns? Murdochs empire not only admits to lying etc. but also states it is entertainment not news just out to make money of the gullible, as opposed to a not-for-profit broadcaster with a reputation for high factual reporting?
Get a grip ffs/
I've looked back through my emails as I recognised the name Hotez from somewhere...
https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/welcome-to-the-hotez-gain-of-function
This is a pretty bad smoking gun if you read the whole thing. It seems that Hotez and Peter Daszak were both involved in the funding of research at Wuhan. And this is the guy the BBC and NPR are using to say it was DEFINITELY not a lab leak. Methinks he doth protest too much.
It's truly unbelievable that these public news organisations would use someone with such a well documented conflict of interest.
"The problem with the wet market theory is that no host species was ever found" You mean like the lab leak theory?
It took years to find the host for SARS1.
SARS-CoV-1. Outbreak in Feb. 2003. In late 2017, Chinese scientists traced the virus through the intermediary of Asian palm civets to cave-dwelling horseshoe bats in Xiyang Yi Ethnic Township, Yunnan.
The problem with the lab leak theory is that it has been driven by racism, xenophobia and politics rather than facts and logic.
"The problem with the lab leak theory is that it has been driven by racism, xenophobia and politics rather than facts and logic."
Nope. You might want to get out more. Especially given your previous very broad brush statement about flat earthers, evolution, AGW and brexit. You appear to be driven by personal politics and a disdain for those you see as 'not as smart as you'.
The problem with the lab leak theory is that it has been driven by racism, xenophobia and politics rather than facts and logic."
"Nope." Yes.
"You might want to get out more." Don't be daft, but as they say. projection is common amongst a certain demographic.
"?Especially given your previous very broad brush statement about flat earthers,evolution, AGW and brexit." Not at all. Interestingly one poster responding in a similar manner to you cited am AGW denying Brexiteer in support of the lab leak theory. Said person is also a serial liar. What an Idiot.
"You appear to be driven by personal politics and a disdain for those you see as 'not as smart as you'." Actually no, by facts and experience, you should try them.
If I have to choose whether to believe the "low confidence" and "moderate confidence" of the FBI and the spook agencies...
Well, to appreciate those confidence levels you need to understand that they are below the certainty spooks had (or claimed to have) of Osama Bin Laden being in Afghanistan or WMDs being present in Iraq.
This post has been deleted by its author
That's true, but how the pandemic started is very relevant to planning for the future, because question #1 is "How can we detect a potential pandemic sooner?"
That this one started by at least two animal->human transfers is beyond scientific doubt, whatever the 3-letter agencies say.
For example, https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abp8337
"The people who know the truth aren't going to talk" They have been talking for a long time but get shouted down down by the Russia loving MAGA types et al.
Many in positions of authority know they are lying, but keep it up to keep the gullible base happy. Ever heard of Fox and those that feed them?
"We should move on from attempting to get a definitive answer and work on being better prepared fro the next pandemic." If those pushing pure speculation to push their racism, xenophobia etc. would shut up that would be great.
"better prepared fro the next pandemic."" Interesting that we were on the way to being prepared for COC-2 but those that now spread the conspiracy theory are the ones that destroyed the system.
Britain’s preparedness for the coronavirus pandemic was undermined by scientists believing that such a disease was unlikely to reach UK shores and spread widely, the former chief medical officer for England has told MPs. Former chief medical officer Professor Dame Sally Davies told MPs there was “groupthink”, with infectious disease experts not believing that “Sars, or another Sars, would get from Asia to us”. Given that SARS-CoV-1 spread to Canada, the USA, France, Germany, Australia, Sweden. Italy, Brasil etc., oh, and the UK of course, that was rather an incompetent belief. But then a belief is an idea trusted without being backed up by evidence.
And then the truth.
“This point is backed by Professor James Wood, of Cambridge University. “I think there is very strong evidence for this being caused by natural spillovers but that argument simply does not suit some political groups. They promote the idea that Covid-19 was caused by a lab leak because such a claim deflects attention from increasing evidence that indicates biodiversity loss, deforestation and wildlife trade – which increase the dangers of natural spillovers – are the real dangers that we face from pandemics.”
In other words, fiddling with viruses in laboratories is not the dangerous activity. The real threat comes from the wildlife trade, bulldozing rainforests and clearing wildernesses to provide land for farms and to gain access to mines. As vegetation and wildlife are destroyed, countless species of viruses and the bacteria they host are set loose to seek new hosts, such as humans and domestic livestock. This has happened with HIV and SARS S. And that, for many scientists, is the real lesson of Covid-19.”
>groupthink
I found that rather surprising, it’s not like we haven’t got the experience with which AIDS - a far less transmissible illness and even more recently with Ebola, spread around the world due to the ease of flying from a “hot zone” to down town first world country…
> As vegetation and wildlife are destroyed
The scientists are very worried about the melting of the perms frost, they know there is anthrax in there but don’t know what else has been lurking for a few thousand years…
Interesting how those wanting to send lots of aid to Ukraine will not defend the borders of their own country and prior to 2022 actively claimed Ukraine was the most corrupt country in Europe.
Also interesting how these people hate brexit yet the UK has sent more to Ukraine than all the countries in the EU combined.
The simple fact is Ukraine is corrupt, the US lead a coup in 2014, the US handed Putin Crimea and Donbas in 2015 and now it is being used as a money laundering scheme and allowing govts to continue the 'sky is falling' narrative to maintain their control over the people.
It appears that a majority of people in Europe want the war over even if it means Ukraine being smaller than it started.
> It appears that a majority of people in Europe want the war over even if it means Ukraine being smaller than it started.
I suggest many believe Putin is honest and don’t want to see the evidence, namely there isn’t an international treaty he hasn’t reneged on.
Also, many probably do not want to think of Europe being at war, as that disrupts a comfortable lifestyle…
We don't like or trust Putin, equally do not like or trust ANY US president. They've all broken treaties, the US has a very long history of messing around with other countries (coup in Ukraine for one) and the world would be better off if both regimes would cease to exist. The US military industrial complex and the neo-con and neo-lib warmongers who inhabit the political sphere profit hugely off death and suffering and maintaining the world on the edge of WW3.
The west handed Crimea and Donbas to Putin and then we've been crying about it ever since.
Wray, while no great over of Trump was appointed to the FBI in the wake of the James Comey firestorm. He is still a partisan Republican, and an ally to the modern conservative movement.
Big surprise then that when Rupert Murdoch is eyeballs deep in his own troubles that Wray is happy to show up on the WSJ and recycle his previous statements on the lab leak theory that only his department seems to find enough support for to claim more than low confidence. He provided no new evidence of course, just the same arm waving we have seen from him.
Maybe people outside the conservative world are having a harder time connecting the dots, but this is just another smokescreen to deflect attention from the implosion of the toxic and parasitic relationship the modern conservatives in government, the groups like the Federalist and John Birch Society, and the conservative news media. Like so many other cases of conservative making inflammatory claims, He offered no new evidence to support his offices claims, and no other part of government, the private sector, or academia have come to the same conclusion.
Based on the evidence, a lab leak is possible, but that just means it joins all of the other plausible scenarios. There is no evidentiary reason to think that either the Wuhan Virology Lab or wet market was the sole start of this outbreak, though it certainly passed through both of them during the pandemic. It is likely the primary source could have been either an animal in another area that infected a person that then carried the infection to Wuhan, or an infected animal brought to the city. Due to the time passed, interference with outside and inside investigators by the Chinese government, and the wake of the pandemic, we are unlikely to find definitive answers for anything farther back. But we would expect researchers at the Wuhan Virology lab to be at the center of the response as the outbreak unfolded to to their expertise, and the animal market was a hub for trafficking wildlife, so those paths cross over so often that without unlikely definitive evidence declaring one or the other as the source is literally guesswork.
Wray of course said none of THAT. He provided no solid basis for his agencies position rooted in actual evidence. And he talked up the fox news position without fully committing to it:
"Here you are talking about a potential leak from a Chinese government-controlled lab that killed millions of Americans"
"I will just make the observation that the Chinese government, it seems to me, has been doing its best to try to thwart and obfuscate the work here"
Which of course they are because they don't want to risk the rest of the world blaming them, and it's not like we haven't done it before. Where were Rumsfelds' WMDs again? And their own people would tear them apart. So even if they didn't intentionally or accidentaly cause this they are going to clamp down on it. And that lab isn't even fully Chinese controlled, as there was and is an international team of researchers there specializing in bat coronavirus research. Probably a good thing too as their research helped provide the fast roadmap to a working vaccine.
Instead presented it as a free hit t-up for Murdoch's spin-doctor team to knock it over the fence and score points with the conspiracy theorists.
And the "it's classified" crap is also deflated, as the other TLAs that deal with overseas classified data have all weighed in with the same assessment. If the FBI had classified information that a credible threat of a potential biological weapon incident and didn't share it with the agencies whose primary remit is foreign classified intelligence he needs to be immediately fired. If they did properly share whatever evidence they have, and the other agencies shot down, why is he doing a press tour for Rupert Murdoc's media empire? Wray is acting like a stooge. Sounds like we should start looking for a new FBI head either way.
That's setting aside the fact that hiding credible evidence of culpability of the Chinese government in a global pandemic killing millions worldwide would be one of the cruelest and most cynical coverups in history.
"Big surprise then that when Rupert Murdoch is eyeballs deep in his own troubles that Wray is happy to show up on the WSJ and recycle his previous statements on the lab leak theory"
Exactly, I was about to post that it was an amazing co-incidence that an IQ45 stooge "leaked" this after FauxNews was exposed for what it really is.
The US Department of Energy overseas American energy policy. In what way is it all qualified to issue findings on viruses?
The FBI... well. 20 years ago some people were kidnapped and held since without charge in Guantanamo. This is a crime against humanity. There is no evidence these people were ever terrorists, but the USA with the help of the FBI deemed them so. Slowly but surely these kidnap victims are being released. Yes, the FBI says the weather is good. Take an umbrella with you.
We saw how good American "intelligence" was in Afghanistan. They thought longer term that the Afghan government would hold out for months at least, and probably for several years. They held out a few hours. They said that a family they mercilessly bombed on the last day were all terrorists, and they stuck with that label until it was proven otherwise.
America is usually wrong about things, and only when it is shown otherwise does it then grudgingly say "well shucks".
The US Department of Energy overseas American energy policy. In what way is it all qualified to issue findings on viruses?
The DOE doesn't actually oversee American energy policy, but it does run the "National Laboratories" that do research in a variety of areas, including biology.
The book is called "Critical Thinking for Strategic Intelligence", 2nd edition, page 213. The subject is 'measuring perceptions of uncertainty'.
It is very instructive to me to see how varied on a scale from 0 to 100 certain words mean to certain/different people. This study asked NATO officers to put on a scale from 0 to 100 words and terms like "almost certainly", "highly likely", "we believe", and about ten more words like that.
[unable to quote, so paraphasing]
It's a graph so I can't quote it. But here goes. The words "probable", "probably", "likely" appeared on the scale from 0-100 from about 26 and higher. Meaning, from the context, that a number people who thought there was a 1 in 4 possibility of something being so, to them this meant it was probable. The words "we believe" appear from about 19 on the scale.
[end paraphrase]
So the next time you read or hear some of these people saying "something is probable", consider they may be amongst the group that is giving it a 1 in 4 chance of being correct.
I think the problem with the "mysterious insertion" conjecture is that this insertion was out of phase. During gene transcription the coding part of the genome is read in blocks of 3 nuleotide bases that are converted as a triplet into an amino acid, and many of these amino acids make a protein. So if you want to sensibly insert something new into a genome sequence you would insert the new bases in multiples of three between two blocks of 3. This would be an in-phase insertion. But the insertion that is being discussed was out of phase - so it would generally just muck up the coding around the insertion site and create nonsense - not something you would ever do intentionally. The random horizontal transfer of blocks of genetic material between organisms (that frequently occurs in viruses) would on the other hand not differentiate between an in-phase and an out-of-phase insertion, and in contrast to a local duplication, would likely appear as a block of multiple bases rather than a short or single base. So this looks maybe more natural than artificial.
The problem I have with this is the source. If it was not the US I would be able to maybe give it more credence, but they have embarked on a veritable campaign to affect China which makes any such announcement far less credible without actual hard evidence - at that just isn't available.
If this had come from a more credible source, fine, but at the moment the US is in a competition battle with China so to me this 'conclusion' stinks.
The next question is, of course, if it now matters. Will it make a difference knowing this? I honestly don't know.
Are you referring to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute?
Any organisation which has to put "an independent, non-partisan think tank that produces expert and timely advice" in a banner at the top of its home page should be viewed with scepticism.
Especially when said advice is so produced "for Australia’s strategic and defence leaders".
Australian sources are even less trust worthy.
They could be telling the truth, but their rhetoric is "China bad" no matter if actually bad, or even involved.
Not that I like the CCP, they are mostly not a force of good, but this is getting a bit ridiculous.
Remember when Huawei was being accused of being a security risk? This is probably part of the same confrontation between the US and China.
As someone living in Europe, we can only lose from this.
ChatGPT says the FBI "is not a scientific or medical institution with expertise in infectious diseases".
Unlike some of the other c0bblers it comes out with from time to time, this pronouncement seems reasonable. Even if you put aside it's dodginess, it is supposed to be a fighter of crime within the USA.
If China does a "Windscale" on Wuhan, then, there's no smoke without fire as they say
Windscale[Sellafield]
Wuhan[???]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windscale_fire
"but if you're staring straight at the core of a shut down reactor you're going to get quite a bit of radiation." (Tuohy lived to the age of 90, despite his exposure.)
icon: for Tom Tuohy
UK cat cull was considered early in Covid crisis, ex-minister says
James Bethell says government considered whether all pet cats might have to be put down to contain virus
Birds and small mammals would be happy. At a time where the bird population is declining in Europe, that may be an interesting move.
"It's been a popular theory among armchair commentators since the beginning. The outbreak started in Wuhan, China. There's a Wuhan Institute of Virology. QED."
Nope. That was never the argument of most, but the dumbest "armchair commentators". There were a lot more circumstances known, and all of them coming together would have to be a very strange coincident IF it was not a lab leak, but would be straightly following and consistent IF it was a lab leak.
The real smoking gun in the situation, however, is the fact that China tried everything to hide facts and hinder investigations at every point they could, which is NOT what someone innocent would do.
"An argument against that conspiracy theory"
Is your argument, that if there's a counterargument against something, then it's a conspiracy theory? Because by that definition the argument contradicting your argument also makes your argument a conspiracy theory.
The funniest thing about this article is that it still labels the lab leak theory a conspiracy theory, right after multiple credible agencies have confirmed that - based on known facts and evidence - it seems the most likely one.
Then again some people just can't even comprehend that "lab leak" != "intentionally released into the wild".
"Then again some people just can't even comprehend that "lab leak" != "intentionally released into the wild"."
Oh no, we comprehend that just fine. China would be absolutely insane to deliberately leak something like covid.
However....
It appears the first case was in Oct/Nov 2019
It was not 'discovered' until early 2020
The 'run by China' WHO tweeted out that there was no evidence of human to human transmission when in reality it was busy spreading all over the world
China's 'zero covid' policy was hailed by the WHO, WEF and other crony organizations as a wonder of 'science'
And then we discover in the last few months that in fact their policy was absolutely useless and they've been lying all along.
And lets not mention the early reaction from the US democrat party... Come to Chinatown, its safe!
Now if I was someone with a bit of a tin foil hat fetish I'd be thinking that China intentionally covered up the discovery and massively played down the severity in the early stages to ensure it spread far and wide and then spent over 2 years pretending that they had come up with a way to keep it at bay while all us useless western countries counted up the people who died 'with covid'.
At best this was used as a great excuse by various corrupt governments and crony orgs as an excuse for a massive power grab. If you're wearing the catering grade foil then it could be seen as a deliberate act to create the situation for such power grab. If a government can give itself extra powers during an 'emergency' without any checks and balances then it is in their interest for there to always be an emergency.
You remember wrong.
He was taking precautions but wasn't screaming 'the sky is falling'. It just happens that the other side of the political swamp pushed the counter narrative that 'there is no crisis, go about your daily business, nothing to worry about' for several months as an opportunity to criticise Trump for his travel restrictions and then quickly pivoted to 'he f-ed everything up as he didn't take it seriously' the moment it became advantageous for them to do so.
So basically the dems did everything they could to ensure Covid got to the US and spread far and wide and then screamed about how awful it is and how it is Trump's fault.
tRump's "travel restrictions" were about as useful as tits on a boar. Restricting travel of only Chinese Nationals from Wuhan was completely pointless with respect to stopping the spread of disease, as the non-Chinese travellers could carry the virus just as well.
tRump knew it was serious, but then LIED about it in an attempt to save Wall Street. Calling it "no big deal" and making the pandemic political was a yuge mistake by the Florida Orange Man.
Had he simply turned the CDC loose and supported them he would be on his second term as POTUS (demonizing mail-in voting was also a baaaad idea), as his bungling the COVID response was a major factor in his 2020 election loss.
The real smoking gun in the situation, however, is the fact that China tried everything to hide facts and hinder investigations at every point they could, which is NOT what someone innocent would do.
So China was facing the possibility that a leak had happened that they didn’t know about. Do they admit they didn’t know and risk scaring their population and looking incompetent to the west, or do they admit that something happened originating from Wuhan but wasn’t from their lab thus ensuring their perceived scientific credibility.
There is some truth in there, likely that it originated from Wuhan, doesn’t mean it came from WIV, there is another bio lab in Wuhan. The fact China claimed it came from a wet market suggests they have some skin in the blame game.
Maybe some bats were infected and meant to be destroyed but ended up in the market anyway. Maybe staff from a lab got infected and went to the market where it spread.
What ever, the virus was man made.
This may be as close to the truth as we will get.
"Snopes: "Despite creating some confusion with his remarks, Trump did not call the coronavirus a hoax.""
Given everything Trump has said, I'm pretty confident that Trump said both that and the complete opposite.
I do know he came up with various racist style names for Covid-19, in his usual disgusting demagogue style.
He caused violence against Chinese-looking people in USA (no surprise given Trump's moronic followers).
Nope, he called it a democrat party hoax.
And remember at the time many democrats were saying that it is perfectly safe to go out and to keep travelling. Nancy Pelosi did a photo op in Chinatown, the top public health official in NY said 'its not a problem' and in New Orleans they said it would be fine to have Mardi Gras.
Aged like fine milk on a radiator.
Just like how a lot of dems and dem leaning media were saying they would not trust the Trump Vaxx at the end of 2020 and the moment Sleepy Joe gets into office they flip to 'get the vax or else! Its perfectly safe!'.
I've thought the same thing for a couple of years, but I never thought anyone in government would actually say it.
Note that I DO believe it was an accidental release, not an intentional one. If it was being developed as a weapon, it definitely wasn't ready for use yet. If it was just being studied, it just goes to prove that sometimes we're more curious than we actually are "smart" about things.
Regardless of the origins, it's the new fall/winter shot. It is a nasty infection and I lost a week's income to it, but it could have been a lot worse if I hadn't been immunized.
I don't believe in any screaming nutbar theories. It just seemed awfully suspicious to me how easily it evades evolving vaccines... that seems very much like a "design feature", rather than an accident.
"It just seemed awfully suspicious to me how easily it evades evolving vaccines"
Because the vaccines were in reality pretty useless.
Covid basically works in two phases. Firstly the infection gets into the face holes and starts off in the mucosal linings before working its way into the rest of your body. The vaccines did very little, if anything, to protect against the first phase. Which also happens to be when it is most transmissible.
"Firstly the infection gets into the face holes and starts off in the mucosal linings before working its way into the rest of your body. The vaccines did very little, if anything, to protect against the first phase. Which also happens to be when it is most transmissible."
You really, really don't understand what vaccines are, and how they work.
So show how I'm wrong. I will wait.
https://www.cell.com/cell-host-microbe/fulltext/S1931-3128(22)00572-8
"Viruses that replicate in the human respiratory mucosa without infecting systemically, including influenza A, SARS-CoV-2, endemic coronaviruses, RSV, and many other “common cold” viruses, cause significant mortality and morbidity and are important public health concerns. Because these viruses generally do not elicit complete and durable protective immunity by themselves, they have not to date been effectively controlled by licensed or experimental vaccines."
This was co-authored by Fauci.
You're not going to like this, but he is absolutely correct - colds and coronaviruses and a host of others have never been successfully managed through vaccines.
Just because you have a hammer doesn't make everything a nail. Just because we have vaccines doesn't mean they can resolve all virus-related issues in the world.
It must be time to stop with the propaganda by now. From what I can see there is plenty of evidence showing Wuhan wasn't even where it originated, they just spotted it faster because there were experts there. Many reported cases of identical symptoms globally in late 2018, many predating Wuhan.
If the FBI want to save lives, take a look at gun crime and stop trying to start a global war just because the USD is collapsing.
I remember there was a (small) piece of UK scientific research published which supported this; they analysed tissue samples taken months before CoViD19 was identified, using the tests for CoViD19 which had then been developed. Their conclusion was that cases of CoViD19 had occurred in the UK more than 4 months before Wuhan.
There's already a high level of anti-Chinese and anti-Asian hate going around in the US. Why release more statements like this, where they are only low or moderate confidence? How does Fred the barista knowing that the intelligence community thinks it came from a lab in Wuhan help them?
Strange how “ armchair commentators” arrived at these and other conclusions such a long time ago.
Even stranger is that the US government controlled what info was released to the public and so shaped the narrative the “ armchair commentators” picked up on. It’s almost like this was meant to be the story but it got changed at the last moments to a slightly different narrative.
There is the strange issue that Obama forbid gain of function research from happening in the US so Fauci, who ran the NIH, sponsored said research which happened at that Wuhan lab.
The WIV is not the only bio lab in Wuhan but no one is talking about that.
Some things regarded as myths but now shown as true
https://nypost.com/2023/02/27/10-myths-told-by-covid-experts-now-debunked/
The FBI. The US organization that is specifically prohibited from operating outside US borders.
Excuse me if I don't think that the opinion of the FBI on international matters is something I should pay attention to - especially when it is expressed on Fox Spews.
I note that the CIA has not expressed any opinion on the matter, and is specifically cited as remaining "on the fence" on the matter.
Personally, if I were American, I'd be asking as to why a domestic security organization that has no possibility of even investigating outside US borders is using resources to investigate this question when there are actual intelligence organizations that are already on the job and have access to international operations.
But hey, that's just my opinion.
"Yur Govmint sez thet tha Boogeyman dun it so it muss be tru." Wait? You believe the same government that persistently and consistently lies about just about everything? <LOL>
<sarcasm> Of course the US/Russia/EU/UK has NEVER participated in biological warfare research or viral research and could not be remotely considered to be hypocritical in pointing their fingers at Chinese research labs. </sarcasm> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity_incidents
Is it possible that it was a lab leak? Yes. Is it possible that it was a "natural" transfer? Yes. I put natural in quotes because of course humans created the market in Wuhan and there is nothing "natural" about putting southern Chinese bats next to African Pangolins. One thing we can be certain of either way,... it was caused by stupid, greedy, selfish humans.
So, to counteract various links claiming the Covid genome must have been engineered:
"SARS-CoV-2 furin cleavage site was not engineered"
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2211107119
And from that article, for those going on about bat-shortages in Wuhan:
"The immediate proximal ancestor of SARS-CoV-2 did not come directly from a bat to a human, but first evolved in an intermediate host."
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
