The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins

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The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins

Post by Anonymous Bosch »

Vanity Fair, of all places, provides an incredibly detailed and comprehensive appraisal -- seriously, it's enormously long, but well worth reading -- of the origins of COVID-19 (and why and how members of our own bureaucracy obfuscated and stifled the push for transparency):

The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins
vanityfair.com wrote:Throughout 2020, the notion that the novel coronavirus leaked from a lab was off-limits. Those who dared to push for transparency say toxic politics and hidden agendas kept us in the dark.

I. A Group Called DRASTIC

Gilles Demaneuf is a data scientist with the Bank of New Zealand in Auckland. He was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome ten years ago, and believes it gives him a professional advantage. “I’m very good at finding patterns in data, when other people see nothing,” he says.

Early last spring, as cities worldwide were shutting down to halt the spread of COVID-19, Demaneuf, 52, began reading up on the origins of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the disease. The prevailing theory was that it had jumped from bats to some other species before making the leap to humans at a market in China, where some of the earliest cases appeared in late 2019. The Huanan wholesale market, in the city of Wuhan, is a complex of markets selling seafood, meat, fruit, and vegetables. A handful of vendors sold live wild animals—a possible source of the virus.

That wasn’t the only theory, though. Wuhan is also home to China’s foremost coronavirus research laboratory, housing one of the world’s largest collections of bat samples and bat-virus strains. The Wuhan Institute of Virology’s lead coronavirus researcher, Shi Zhengli, was among the first to identify horseshoe bats as the natural reservoirs for SARS-CoV, the virus that sparked an outbreak in 2002, killing 774 people and sickening more than 8,000 globally. After SARS, bats became a major subject of study for virologists around the world, and Shi became known in China as “Bat Woman” for her fearless exploration of their caves to collect samples. More recently, Shi and her colleagues at the WIV have performed high-profile experiments that made pathogens more infectious. Such research, known as “gain-of-function,” has generated heated controversy among virologists.

To some people, it seemed natural to ask whether the virus causing the global pandemic had somehow leaked from one of the WIV’s labs—a possibility Shi has strenuously denied.

On February 19, 2020, The Lancet, among the most respected and influential medical journals in the world, published a statement that roundly rejected the lab-leak hypothesis, effectively casting it as a xenophobic cousin to climate change denialism and anti-vaxxism. Signed by 27 scientists, the statement expressed “solidarity with all scientists and health professionals in China” and asserted: “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.”

The Lancet statement effectively ended the debate over COVID-19’s origins before it began. To Gilles Demaneuf, following along from the sidelines, it was as if it had been “nailed to the church doors,” establishing the natural origin theory as orthodoxy. “Everyone had to follow it. Everyone was intimidated. That set the tone.”

The statement struck Demaneuf as “totally nonscientific.” To him, it seemed to contain no evidence or information. And so he decided to begin his own inquiry in a “proper” way, with no idea of what he would find.

Demaneuf began searching for patterns in the available data, and it wasn’t long before he spotted one. China’s laboratories were said to be airtight, with safety practices equivalent to those in the U.S. and other developed countries. But Demaneuf soon discovered that there had been four incidents of SARS-related lab breaches since 2004, two occuring at a top laboratory in Beijing. Due to overcrowding there, a live SARS virus that had been improperly deactivated, had been moved to a refrigerator in a corridor. A graduate student then examined it in the electron microscope room and sparked an outbreak.

Demaneuf published his findings in a Medium post, titled “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: a review of SARS Lab Escapes.” By then, he had begun working with another armchair investigator, Rodolphe de Maistre. A laboratory project director based in Paris who had previously studied and worked in China, de Maistre was busy debunking the notion that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was a “laboratory” at all. In fact, the WIV housed numerous laboratories that worked on coronaviruses. Only one of them has the highest biosafety protocol: BSL-4, in which researchers must wear full-body pressurized suits with independent oxygen. Others are designated BSL-3 and even BSL-2, roughly as secure as an American dentist’s office.

Having connected online, Demaneuf and de Maistre began assembling a comprehensive list of research laboratories in China. As they posted their findings on Twitter, they were soon joined by others around the world. Some were cutting-edge scientists at prestigious research institutes. Others were science enthusiasts. Together, they formed a group called DRASTIC, short for Decentralized Radical Autonomous Search Team Investigating COVID-19. Their stated objective was to solve the riddle of COVID-19’s origin.

At times, it seemed the only other people entertaining the lab-leak theory were crackpots or political hacks hoping to wield COVID-19 as a cudgel against China. President Donald Trump’s former political adviser Steve Bannon, for instance, joined forces with an exiled Chinese billionaire named Guo Wengui to fuel claims that China had developed the disease as a bioweapon and purposefully unleashed it on the world. As proof, they paraded a Hong Kong scientist around right-wing media outlets until her manifest lack of expertise doomed the charade.

With disreputable wing nuts on one side of them and scornful experts on the other, the DRASTIC researchers often felt as if they were on their own in the wilderness, working on the world’s most urgent mystery. They weren’t alone. But investigators inside the U.S. government asking similar questions were operating in an environment that was as politicized and hostile to open inquiry as any Twitter echo chamber. When Trump himself floated the lab-leak hypothesis last April, his divisiveness and lack of credibility made things more, not less, challenging for those seeking the truth.

“The DRASTIC people are doing better research than the U.S. government,” says David Asher, a former senior investigator under contract to the State Department.

The question is: Why?
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Re: The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins

Post by malchior »

Anonymous Bosch wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 12:08 pm Vanity Fair, of all places, provides an incredibly detailed and comprehensive appraisal -- seriously, it's enormously long, but well worth reading
Hard pass. I read up to the part where they introduce a person - Gilles Demaneuf -- and don't give any context about who he is up front. I stepped out of the article because I often find that suspicious. Usually when someone shows up in a story like this it is because they aren't credentialed. Lo and behold this guy is not a virologist or epidemiologist...instead he is a Quant. Another fucking Nate Silver and a little digging shows he has been chasing COVID conspiracy theories since last year. Enough for me to pause on a read. I believe the lab leak theory might be right. These DRASTIC guys might be right but this article is likely not all that credible and I'm not wasting time on it personally. I could be wrong but I'll wait for Smoove_B to weigh in (as I suspect this making waves in his community) before I bother to give this a shot.

Edit: ;tldr - this has a strong Barrington Declaration stink to it.
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Re: The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins

Post by El Guapo »

Where I am currently on the whole lab leak thing is as follows:

(1) It's essentially insane to think that COVID was intentionally engineered as some type of bioweapon and/or was intentionally released by China;
(2) There is at least some chance that the COVID outbreak started as some type of accidental lab leak, though the information that we have right now suggests that the chance of that is low (though nonzero);
(3) A lot of people conflate #1 and #2;
(4) In part because Trump and some of his allies pushed some combination of theories #1 and #2 in order to try to blame the outbreak on China, a lot of noncrazy people dismissed #2 out of hand and didn't really look into it much;
(5) Most people are now taking #2 (the accidental lab leak theory) seriously and are looking into it, even though the odds of it proving out are still relatively low.

Is that all roughly correct? If so it's kind of interesting how much ink seems to be getting spilled on this these days, since it doesn't seem all that interesting. At this point just get back to me when we know what the answer is on the origin of the virus.
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Re: The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins

Post by LordMortis »

malchior wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 12:34 pm don't give any context about who he is up front.
That's like hovering over a hyperlink and seeing random characters .ly/ random characters. It could be legit but I'm not investing any energy to find out. Good bye.
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Re: The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins

Post by Jaymann »

I'm not real clear on the non-lab leak origin theory. Somebody fucked a bat?
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Re: The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins

Post by malchior »

El Guapo wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 12:56 pmIs that all roughly correct? If so it's kind of interesting how much ink seems to be getting spilled on this these days, since it doesn't seem all that interesting. At this point just get back to me when we know what the answer is on the origin of the virus.
That list is my understanding as well. The ink being spilled is IMO attempts to give credibility to non-experts/people with unsupported opinions for ... unknown reasons. I don't know what this is but I can't help but feel that the motives aren't good because I agree it shouldn't be interesting. It is only interesting if you are looking to break things.
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Re: The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins

Post by Isgrimnur »

Jaymann wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 1:01 pm I'm not real clear on the non-lab leak origin theory. Somebody fucked a bat?
It's a coronavirus, not a catwoman virus.
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Re: The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins

Post by Defiant »

El Guapo wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 12:56 pm Where I am currently on the whole lab leak thing is as follows:

(1) It's essentially insane to think that COVID was intentionally engineered as some type of bioweapon and/or was intentionally released by China;
(2) There is at least some chance that the COVID outbreak started as some type of accidental lab leak, though the information that we have right now suggests that the chance of that is low (though nonzero);
(3) A lot of people conflate #1 and #2;
(4) In part because Trump and some of his allies pushed some combination of theories #1 and #2 in order to try to blame the outbreak on China, a lot of noncrazy people dismissed #2 out of hand and didn't really look into it much;
(5) Most people are now taking #2 (the accidental lab leak theory) seriously and are looking into it, even though the odds of it proving out are still relatively low.

Is that all roughly correct? If so it's kind of interesting how much ink seems to be getting spilled on this these days, since it doesn't seem all that interesting. At this point just get back to me when we know what the answer is on the origin of the virus.
This.


And even the quoted text from the article does (3), implying that:
“We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.”
meant that it had
rejected the lab-leak hypothesis
When what it does is dismiss the possibility of (1), not (1) and (2).
Last edited by Defiant on Fri Jun 04, 2021 1:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins

Post by Smoove_B »

I will indicate that this is indeed a really long article and it's going to take me a bit to read.
Maybe next year, maybe no go
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Re: The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins

Post by Anonymous Bosch »

malchior wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 12:34 pm
Anonymous Bosch wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 12:08 pm Vanity Fair, of all places, provides an incredibly detailed and comprehensive appraisal -- seriously, it's enormously long, but well worth reading
Hard pass. I read up to the part where they introduce a person - Gilles Demaneuf -- and don't give any context about who he is up front. I stepped out of the article because I often find that suspicious. Usually when someone shows up in a story like this it is because they aren't credentialed. Lo and behold this guy is not a virologist or epidemiologist...instead he is a Quant. Another fucking Nate Silver and a little digging shows he has been chasing COVID conspiracy theories since last year. Enough for me to pause on a read. I believe the lab leak theory might be right. These DRASTIC guys might be right but this article is likely not all that credible and I'm not wasting time on it personally. I could be wrong but I'll wait for Smoove_B to weigh in (as I suspect this making waves in his community) before I bother to give this a shot.

Edit: ;tldr - this has a strong Barrington Declaration stink to it.
They provide context of who he is in the very first sentence, which clearly implies he is neither a virologist or epidemiologist. So kvetching over the notion that he's an expert at analyzing and managing quantitative data but not a virologist or epidemiologist is merely a converse fallacious argument from authority or ad-hominem (i.e. arguing that someone does not possess sufficient authority, and therefore their claims must be false). And in fairness, until awfully recently, pretty much anyone proposing the Wuhan lab-leak theory was unhesitatingly dismissed as a racist or conspiratorial crackpot. And as the article makes clear, there's a world of difference between the conspiratorial crackpot notion that COVID-19 was a purposely-engineered Chinese bioweapon (as suggested by Steve Bannon and exiled Chinese billionaire named Guo Wengui) vs. a more likely and feasible act of human negligence.
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Re: The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins

Post by malchior »

Anonymous Bosch wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 1:20 pmThey provide context of who he is in the very first sentence, which clearly implies he is neither a virologist or epidemiologist.
Interestingly I didn't get the first sentence. Looking at it on the web maybe it is because they used an illuminated initial. It's a shame because I would have probably stopped wasting my time earlier.
So kvetching over the notion that he's an expert at analyzing and managing quantitative data but not a virologist or epidemiologist is merely a converse fallacious argument from authority (i.e. arguing that someone does not possess sufficient authority, and therefore their claims must be false).
Thanks for starting off from a position of complete condescension. However, I do give points for immediately dropping back to 1990s style Internet argumentation since it is pretty rare nowadays. Congrats on the blast from the past dive into 'semi-trolling' even if you applied the argument completely incorrectly.
And in fairness, until awfully recently, pretty much anyone proposing the Wuhan lab-leak theory was unhesitatingly dismissed as a racist or conspiratorial crackpot.
And I still will think that way if they say the evidence is strong because it is just as paper thin as it was back then. That is why it was treated that way in the first place. The people you mentioned afterwards below sold it hard but even the negligence factor was being spun for unhelpful political purposes. It was most likely a ploy to pin blame on some "other" for their failures. And that disinformation work is still being done at the moment. Until I hear otherwise, I bucket this firmly in that category.
And as the article makes clear, there's a world of difference between the conspiratorial crackpot notion that COVID-19 was a purposely-engineered Chinese bioweapon (as suggested by Steve Bannon and exiled Chinese billionaire named Guo Wengui) vs. a more likely and feasible act of human negligence.
And they might be right but when your story is built around highly potential non-expert cranks - I'm going to treat it like it hackery until someone who can read between the lines says it might be fair. I don't have that strong feeling right now.
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Re: The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins

Post by Anonymous Bosch »

malchior wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 1:01 pm
El Guapo wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 12:56 pmIs that all roughly correct? If so it's kind of interesting how much ink seems to be getting spilled on this these days, since it doesn't seem all that interesting. At this point just get back to me when we know what the answer is on the origin of the virus.
That list is my understanding as well. The ink being spilled is IMO attempts to give credibility to non-experts/people with unsupported opinions for ... unknown reasons. I don't know what this is but I can't help but feel that the motives aren't good because I agree it shouldn't be interesting. It is only interesting if you are looking to break things.
YMMV, but I think there's plenty of interest when I come across elements of the story like this:
vanityfair.com wrote:Behind closed doors, however, national security and public health experts and officials across a range of departments in the executive branch were locked in high-stakes battles over what could and couldn’t be investigated and made public.

A months long Vanity Fair investigation, interviews with more than 40 people, and a review of hundreds of pages of U.S. government documents, including internal memos, meeting minutes, and email correspondence, found that conflicts of interest, stemming in part from large government grants supporting controversial virology research, hampered the U.S. investigation into COVID-19’s origin at every step. In one State Department meeting, officials seeking to demand transparency from the Chinese government say they were explicitly told by colleagues not to explore the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s gain-of-function research, because it would bring unwelcome attention to U.S. government funding of it.

In an internal memo obtained by Vanity Fair, Thomas DiNanno, former acting assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance, wrote that staff from two bureaus, his own and the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, “warned” leaders within his bureau “not to pursue an investigation into the origin of COVID-19” because it would “‘open a can of worms’ if it continued.”

There are reasons to doubt the lab-leak hypothesis. There is a long, well-documented history of natural spillovers leading to outbreaks, even when the initial and intermediate host animals have remained a mystery for months and years, and some expert virologists say the supposed oddities of the SARS-CoV-2 sequence have been found in nature.

But for most of the past year, the lab-leak scenario was treated not simply as unlikely or even inaccurate but as morally out-of-bounds. In late March, former Centers for Disease Control director Robert Redfield received death threats from fellow scientists after telling CNN that he believed COVID-19 had originated in a lab. “I was threatened and ostracized because I proposed another hypothesis,” Redfield told Vanity Fair. “I expected it from politicians. I didn’t expect it from science.”
Granted, it's been a while since I learned about the scientific method, but we ought to be able to agree that death-threats and ostracization definitely ought not be the response from scientists to a proposed hypothesis.
Last edited by Anonymous Bosch on Fri Jun 04, 2021 1:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins

Post by malchior »

Anonymous Bosch wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 1:40 pmBut for most of the past year, the lab-leak scenario was treated not simply as unlikely or even inaccurate but as morally out-of-bounds. In late March, former Centers for Disease Control director Robert Redfield received death threats from fellow scientists after telling CNN that he believed COVID-19 had originated in a lab. “I was threatened and ostracized because I proposed another hypothesis,” Redfield told Vanity Fair. “I expected it from politicians. I didn’t expect it from science.”
Jebus. This is why I don't trust this. Redfield as a credible source? Scientists were threatening him with death? Come on. This is completely unserious.

Edit: I saw this talk on Twitter yesterday and didn't know the source. Maybe it's true but the guy was a political hack caught lying to the public multiple times. Why should we trust him?

Edit 2: The VF piece talks about this Redfield allegation as if it was verified true. They better have the receipts because that's not cool if they are just taking his word on it. It's telling that they don't talk about his controversial past or the issues that came out during his tenure as head of the CDC last year. That they are absent is ... not great. This piece has some real shakiness to it.
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Re: The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins

Post by Blackhawk »

With this kind of a claim, the onus is on the claimant to back it up.
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Re: The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins

Post by malchior »

Blackhawk wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 3:19 pm With this kind of a claim, the onus is on the claimant to back it up.
The thing that people have pointed out is that he used the word 'scientists'. That implies not anonymous. Were they charged? What's the evidence, etc.
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Re: The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins

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Blackhawk wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 3:19 pm With this kind of a claim, the onus is on the claimant to back it up.
FWIW, Redfield specifically claims it was a former friend that said he should just "wither and die," in which case I can certainly understand his reticence to publicly reveal their identity (and I see no reason to assume the authors of the article neglected to perform even the most basic principle of journalism in terms of verifying his claims prior to publishing):
vanityfair.com wrote:By spring of 2021, the debate over COVID-19’s origins had become so noxious that death threats were flying in both directions.

In a CNN interview on March 26, Dr. Redfield, the former CDC director under Trump, made a candid admission: “I am of the point of view that I still think the most likely etiology of this pathogen in Wuhan was from a laboratory, you know, escaped.” Redfield added that he believed the release was an accident, not an intentional act. In his view, nothing that happened since his first calls with Dr. Gao changed a simple fact: The WIV needed to be ruled out as a source, and it hadn’t been.

After the interview aired, death threats flooded his inbox. The vitriol came not just from strangers who thought he was being racially insensitive but also from prominent scientists, some of whom used to be his friends. One said he should just “wither and die.”

Peter Daszak was getting death threats too, some from QAnon conspirators.
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Re: The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins

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Anonymous Bosch wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 3:57 pm (and I see no reason to assume the authors of the article neglected to perform even the most basic principle of journalism in terms of verifying his claims prior to publishing)
I also see no reason to assume they did not. Nor do I see a reason to assume they did. Claims demand evidence. If they're not presenting the evidence, we have their word to go on, and that's not enough. I don't trust Vanity Fair, or Fox News, or the NYT, or the BBC simply on their word if they have nothing to back it up. Even if I like what they're saying.
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Re: The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins

Post by malchior »

Blackhawk wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 4:25 pm
Anonymous Bosch wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 3:57 pm (and I see no reason to assume the authors of the article neglected to perform even the most basic principle of journalism in terms of verifying his claims prior to publishing)
I also see no reason to assume they did not. Nor do I see a reason to assume they did. Claims demand evidence. If they're not presenting the evidence, we have their word to go on, and that's not enough. I don't trust Vanity Fair, or Fox News, or the NYT, or the BBC simply on their word if they have nothing to back it up. Even if I like what they're saying.
I generally believe top organizations. They aren't perfect but NYT/WaPo and even Fox's news bureau have a solid history of correcting themselves. Vanity Fair is a big player but not at that level IMO. There is a reason the Redfield death threat story isn't anywhere beyond Vanity Fair and the right-wing news sphere. The whole thing is problematic and again I find it troubling that anyone would talk about Redfield without addressing his severe credibility issues. It's a huge red flag.
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Re: The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins

Post by Holman »

Vanity Fair has published some very good reporting in the past, but you have to judge their stories by the author. They're not principally a news org, so when they publish a investigative story it's because some enterprising independent journalist (e.g. Ronan Farrow) took it to them.

I don't know anything about Katherine Eban (author of the piece under discussion).
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Re: The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins

Post by Isgrimnur »

Enlarge Image

He's just asking questions.
It's almost as if people are the problem.
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Re: The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins

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malchior wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 4:32 pm I generally believe top organizations. They aren't perfect but NYT/WaPo and even Fox's news bureau have a solid history of correcting themselves. V
This is still part of a discussion that I prefaced with,
With this kind of a claim, the onus is on the claimant to back it up.
I'm less picky if the topic is about something with a lesser impact on society.
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Re: The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins

Post by Smoove_B »

So much has already been covered by people that were not dealing with insane thunderstorms today. :D

The one element I wanted to focus on was this:
The ground began to shift on May 2, when Nicholas Wade, a former New York Times science writer known in part for writing a controversial book about how genes shape the social behavior of different races, published a lengthy essay on Medium. In it, he analyzed the scientific clues both for and against a lab leak, and excoriated the media for its failure to report on the dueling hypotheses. Wade devoted a full section to the “furin cleavage site,” a distinctive segment of SARS-CoV-2’s genetic code that makes the virus more infectious by allowing it to efficiently enter human cells.

Within the scientific community, one thing leapt off the page. Wade quoted one of the world’s most famous microbiologists, Dr. David Baltimore, saying that he believed the furin cleavage site “was the smoking gun for the origin of the virus.” Baltimore, a Nobel Laureate and pioneer in molecular biology, was about as far from Steve Bannon and the conspiracy theorists as it was possible to get. His judgment, that the furin cleavage site raised the prospect of gene manipulation, had to be taken seriously.
Now, the analysis of this cleavage site is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay above my paygrade, so I need to trust the scientists that know what they're talking about. And the overwhelming consensus is that the statements made by Dr. Baltimore just aren't (and weren't) correct. Namely that there's nothing about the cleavage site that in any way "proves" this is a man made (or man-tweaked) virus.

This is also waaaaaaaaaay above my paygrade, but I've seen it listed as a "readable" primer (especially if you go back to Parts 1 and 2) on the situation and why the lab-origin theory is unlikely. Again, not impossible; unlikely. Overall the presentation isn't as sexy as Vanity Fair, but there you go.

So that's why I keep going back to the scientific community on this. Not the people talking about coverups or emails, but people that have dedicated their entire careers to analyze viruses. When they use their expertise to say that there's no direct, irrefutable evidence that this virus was made in lab, I have to listen to them.

I do think the ending of this article should be shouted from the rooftops:
While this disease was not designed in a lab, this does not take humans off the hook for this pandemic. It is not intermediate horseshoe bats and Malayan pangolins that shoulder the responsibility for pandemics. The rise of zoonotic emerging diseases is due to humans encroaching on animals, not the other way around. Risks to people decrease dramatically by protecting wildlife from trafficking and limiting encroachment into wild habitats. Putting our resources towards surveillance and working to better understand questions such as ‘why are bats less affected by many viruses’ could provide us the tools we need to fight future outbreaks.

We may find that turning a critical eye towards our own interactions with the environment is a more useful conversation to have about the origins of SARS-CoV-2 instead of amplifying conspiracy theories about shadowy actors. We may even find policy solutions that reduce the chances of a future pandemic by learning lessons from this one.
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Re: The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins

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Smoove_B wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 5:29 pm So much has already been covered by people that were not dealing with insane thunderstorms today. :D

The one element I wanted to focus on was this:
The ground began to shift on May 2, when Nicholas Wade, a former New York Times science writer known in part for writing a controversial book about how genes shape the social behavior of different races, published a lengthy essay on Medium. In it, he analyzed the scientific clues both for and against a lab leak, and excoriated the media for its failure to report on the dueling hypotheses. Wade devoted a full section to the “furin cleavage site,” a distinctive segment of SARS-CoV-2’s genetic code that makes the virus more infectious by allowing it to efficiently enter human cells.

Within the scientific community, one thing leapt off the page. Wade quoted one of the world’s most famous microbiologists, Dr. David Baltimore, saying that he believed the furin cleavage site “was the smoking gun for the origin of the virus.” Baltimore, a Nobel Laureate and pioneer in molecular biology, was about as far from Steve Bannon and the conspiracy theorists as it was possible to get. His judgment, that the furin cleavage site raised the prospect of gene manipulation, had to be taken seriously.
Now, the analysis of this cleavage site is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay above my paygrade, so I need to trust the scientists that know what they're talking about. And the overwhelming consensus is that the statements made by Dr. Baltimore just aren't (and weren't) correct. Namely that there's nothing about the cleavage site that in any way "proves" this is a man made (or man-tweaked) virus.

This is also waaaaaaaaaay above my paygrade, but I've seen it listed as a "readable" primer (especially if you go back to Parts 1 and 2) on the situation and why the lab-origin theory is unlikely. Again, not impossible; unlikely. Overall the presentation isn't as sexy as Vanity Fair, but there you go.

So that's why I keep going back to the scientific community on this. Not the people talking about coverups or emails, but people that have dedicated their entire careers to analyze viruses. When they use their expertise to say that there's no direct, irrefutable evidence that this virus was made in lab, I have to listen to them.
And as Michael Crichton famously put it:
Michael Crichton wrote:Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world.

In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.

In addition, let me remind you that the track record of the consensus is nothing to be proud of. Let’s review a few cases.

In past centuries, the greatest killer of women was fever following childbirth. One woman in six died of this fever. In 1795, Alexander Gordon of Aberdeen suggested that the fevers were infectious processes, and he was able to cure them. The consensus said no.

In 1843, Oliver Wendell Holmes claimed puerperal fever was contagious, and presented compelling evidence. The consensus said no.

In 1849, Semmelweiss demonstrated that sanitary techniques virtually eliminated puerperal fever in hospitals under his management. The consensus said he was a Jew, ignored him, and dismissed him from his post. There was in fact no agreement on puerperal fever until the start of the twentieth century. Thus the consensus took one hundred and twenty five years to arrive at the right conclusion despite the efforts of the prominent “skeptics” around the world, skeptics who were demeaned and ignored. And despite the constant ongoing deaths of women.

There is no shortage of other examples. In the 1920s in America, tens of thousands of people, mostly poor, were dying of a disease called pellagra. The consensus of scientists said it was infectious, and what was necessary was to find the “pellagra germ.” The US government asked a brilliant young investigator, Dr. Joseph Goldberger, to find the cause. Goldberger concluded that diet was the crucial factor. The consensus remained wedded to the germ theory.

Goldberger demonstrated that he could induce the disease through diet. He demonstrated that the disease was not infectious by injecting the blood of a pellagra patient into himself, and his assistant. They and other volunteers swabbed their noses with swabs from pellagra patients, and swallowed capsules containing scabs from pellagra rashes in what were called “Goldberger’s filth parties.” Nobody contracted pellagra.

The consensus continued to disagree with him. There was, in addition, a social factor-southern States disliked the idea of poor diet as the cause, because it meant that social reform was required. They continued to deny it until the 1920s. Result-despite a twentieth century epidemic, the consensus took years to see the light.

Probably every schoolchild notices that South America and Africa seem to fit together rather snugly, and Alfred Wegener proposed, in 1912, that the continents had in fact drifted apart. The consensus sneered at continental drift for fifty years. The theory was most vigorously denied by the great names of geology-until 1961, when it began to seem as if the sea floors were spreading. The result: it took the consensus fifty years to acknowledge what any schoolchild sees.

And shall we go on? The examples can be multiplied endlessly. Jenner and smallpox, Pasteur and germ theory. Saccharine, margarine, repressed memory, fiber and colon cancer, hormone replacement therapy. The list of consensus errors goes on and on.

Finally, I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus is invoked. Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough.

Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way.
Though I'm inclined to agree from my layman's perspective that we're far from having direct, irrefutable evidence that this virus was made in a lab, just as there's no such evidence for zoonosis either. But it's hardly a stretch to concede there's plenty of strong circumstantial evidence for a lab leak, which is why the lab leak position has emerged from conspiracy theory, to debatable, to the POTUS ordering an Intel review.
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Re: The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins

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Anonymous Bosch wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 5:52 pm
Though I would tend to agree from my layman's perspective that we're far from having direct, irrefutable evidence that this virus was created in a lab, just as there's no such evidence for zoonosis either. But it's hardly a stretch to concede there's plenty of strong circumstantial evidence for a lab leak, which is why the lab leak position has emerged from conspiracy theory, to debatable, to the POTUS ordering an Intel review.
That's not true at all. There's no evidence at all for a lab leak. It's a small possibility. It can't be ruled out, but there's no evidence.
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Re: The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins

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noxiousdog wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 6:27 pm
Anonymous Bosch wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 5:52 pm
Though I would tend to agree from my layman's perspective that we're far from having direct, irrefutable evidence that this virus was created in a lab, just as there's no such evidence for zoonosis either. But it's hardly a stretch to concede there's plenty of strong circumstantial evidence for a lab leak, which is why the lab leak position has emerged from conspiracy theory, to debatable, to the POTUS ordering an Intel review.
That's not true at all. There's no evidence at all for a lab leak. It's a small possibility. It can't be ruled out, but there's no evidence.
If you insist upon being pedantic, but that's at least partly because the CCP will have by now most likely destroyed any potential data and evidence the virus leaked from a lab in Wuhan. In terms of circumstantial substantiation, I'll quote former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb from his Face the Nation interview last Sunday:
Scott Gottlieb wrote:And a side of the ledger that suggests that this could have come from a zoonotic source, come out of nature, really hasn't budged. And if anything, you can argue that that side of the ledger has contracted because we've done an exhaustive search for the so-called intermediate host, the animal that could have been exposed to this virus before it spread to humans. We have not found such an animal. We've also fully disproven the market, the food market that was initially implicated in the original outbreak as the source of the outbreak. And so that side of the ledger probably has shrunken and China could provide evidence that would be exculpatory here. They could provide the blood samples from those who worked in the lab in Wuhan. They've refused to do that. They could provide the source strain, some of the original strains. They've refused to do that. They can provide access to some of the early samples that we could sequence. They could provide an inventory of what was in the lab, the Institute of Virology, the lab that has been implicated in a potential lab leak. They have refused to do that. And we know that that lab was poorly constructed, had poor controls. That was reported at the time that it was first opened. We know the lab was engaging in very high-risk research, including infecting transgenic animals, animals with fully human immune systems. We know they were working with SARS-like viruses that have never been disclosed before. And now we have new evidence that some lab workers became infected right at the time that this virus was believed to be first introduced. That's been publicly reported. So that side of the ledger has expanded. And I think that's why there is renewed focus on this.
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Re: The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins

Post by Jeff V »

About a year ago, I read a very good analysis as to the odds Covid-19 was intentionally created. The author gave the odds at roughly that of the same person winning the Powerball and Megamillions jackpots on consecutive nights.

That doesn't mean the Wuhan lab didn't have scientists wondering what happens when you put panda sperm into a centrifuge along with toad snot and balsamic vinaigrette and the outcome looks a lot like SARrrrrrrrrrrrrAIEEEEEEEE! and suddenly the lab rats are dropping like flies. The difference is the latter would be accidental rather than intentional, and that, I should think, is a substantial difference.

But then there's the plain fact that China is the most densely populated country in the world, and pandemic-causing viruses are likelier to rise there than elsewhere for no other reason than that. The base virus already existed, it took a mutation to make it more virulent and deadly and then to spread, something far easier to occur in high density populations. The MAGA idiots are what...trying to justify their racial bigotry and hate mongering by trying to hold China culpable for merely being what it is? Unless the Chinese are lightyears ahead of us in biological engineering, making them a world pariah for intentionally creating this pandemic seems like a waste of brainpower for those who have precious little to spare.
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Re: The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins

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Re: The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins

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Anonymous Bosch wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 6:40 pm I'll quote former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb from his Face the Nation interview last Sunday
I'm a bit surprised former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb didn't relate the story of Ebola and how for decades scientists were unable to find the reservoir where the virus was hiding. Or even after they ultimately figured out it was bats it still took them 6+ years to identify the exact species responsible for the epidemic in West Africa that started in 2013.

The idea that we should know (1) how SARS-Cov-2 originated and (2) from where a scant ~18 months after it was known to be an issue here in the Americas seems...aggressive.

This is also why it's nothing short of amazing that we've come so far in such a short period of time. I'm confident they're going to identify a zoonotic (or as former CDC director Redfiled made up, "zoonose") source, just based on all the other emerging infections. Of course it makes sense to run through all the options - when West Nile Virus appeared in NJ/NY back in 2000 terrorism was suspected initially. Eventually it was ruled out though as a naturally occurring virus that for unknown reasons (still) appeared in the Americas.
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Re: The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins

Post by malchior »

Smoove_B wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 8:52 pm
Anonymous Bosch wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 6:40 pm I'll quote former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb from his Face the Nation interview last Sunday
I'm a bit surprised former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb didn't relate the story of Ebola and how for decades scientists were unable to find the reservoir where the virus was hiding. Or even after they ultimately figured out it was bats it still took them 6+ years to identify the exact species responsible for the epidemic in West Africa that started in 2013.
Yeah I too am surprised that former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb who worked in the Trump administration might have forgotten to mention crucial contextual information in a way that feeds right-wing misinformation. It's a real head scratcher.
This is also why it's nothing short of amazing that we've come so far in such a short period of time. I'm confident they're going to identify a zoonotic (or as former CDC director Redfiled made up, "zoonose") source, just based on all the other emerging infections. Of course it makes sense to run through all the options - when West Nile Virus appeared in NJ/NY back in 2000 terrorism was suspected initially. Eventually it was ruled out though as a naturally occurring virus that for unknown reasons (still) appeared in the Americas.
Yeah - that is prudent but in the end the Chinese aren't a trustworthy partner in good times. When they see a United States where a major political party is actively trying to pin their cult leaders own massive incompetence and failure on their country...they aren't likely going to be too cooperative. It's again a real headscratcher.
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Re: The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins

Post by Holman »

If COVID were a biological weapon designed to be released upon China's enemies, it would be a pretty ridiculous failure.

Its spread was obviously difficult to contain across borders, and it afflicted mostly people of non-military age. It proved very possible (inconveniences aside) for medical professionals to protect themselves from it, and it moved so slowly that even an American administration dedicated to denying its seriousness still managed to put steps in place to limit it. A subsequent, competent administration has proven able to begin defeating the virus despite public resistance from huge, idiotic swaths of the population.

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Re: The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins

Post by Smoove_B »

Also, going back to Dr. Baltimore, just saw this now:


I corresponded with David Baltimore, who Wade quoted as being in favor of a lab origin. I asked him about @K_G_Andersen's points.

Guess what? He agrees. Evolution could have made SARS-CoV-2, he said, he just also wants to consider other hypotheses too.
So here again, it sounds like either Baltimore's original statements were misrepresented or he's had a change of opinion.

~16 minute interview being referenced in the Tweet is linked here.

If you go through her tweet and read the post by @K_G_Andersen (from a month ago) there's a ton of science receipts. Once more, trying to suss out the genuine desire to understand the origins vs trying to create a narrative to further an agenda is becoming harder and harder.
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Re: The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins

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Also, going back to the original article, colour me skeptical that any of the following was naught but a series of unfortunate coincidences under the benevolence of the CCP…
vanityfair.com wrote:VII. The Mojiang Miners

In 2012, six miners in the lush mountains of Mojiang county in southern Yunnan province were assigned an unenviable task: to shovel out a thick carpet of bat feces from the floor of a mine shaft. After weeks of dredging up bat guano, the miners became gravely ill and were sent to the First Affiliated Hospital at the Kunming Medical University in Yunnan’s capital. Their symptoms of cough, fever, and labored breathing rang alarm bells in a country that had suffered through a viral SARS outbreak a decade earlier.

The hospital called in a pulmonologist, Zhong Nanshan, who had played a prominent role in treating SARS patients and would go on to lead an expert panel for China’s National Health Commission on COVID-19. Zhong, according to the 2013 master’s thesis, immediately suspected a viral infection. He recommended a throat culture and an antibody test, but he also asked what kind of bat had produced the guano. The answer: the rufous horseshoe bat, the same species implicated in the first SARS outbreak.

Within months, three of the six miners were dead. The eldest, who was 63, died first. “The disease was acute and fierce,” the thesis noted. It concluded: “the bat that caused the six patients to fall ill was the Chinese rufous horseshoe bat.” Blood samples were sent to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which found that they were positive for SARS antibodies, a later Chinese dissertation documented.

But there was a mystery at the heart of the diagnosis. Bat coronaviruses were not known to harm humans. What was so different about the strains from inside the cave? To find out, teams of researchers from across China and beyond traveled to the abandoned mine shaft to collect viral samples from bats, musk shrews, and rats.

In an October 2013 Nature study, Shi Zhengli reported a key discovery: that certain bat viruses could potentially infect humans without first jumping to an intermediate animal. By isolating a live SARS-like bat coronavirus for the first time, her team had found that it could enter human cells through a protein called the ACE2 receptor.

In subsequent studies in 2014 and 2016, Shi and her colleagues continued studying samples of bat viruses collected from the mine shaft, hoping to figure out which one had infected the miners. The bats were bristling with multiple coronaviruses. But there was only one whose genome closely resembled SARS. The researchers named it RaBtCoV/4991.

On February 3, 2020, with the COVID-19 outbreak already spreading beyond China, Shi Zhengli and several colleagues published a paper noting that the SARS-CoV-2 virus’s genetic code was almost 80% identical to that of SARS-CoV, which caused the 2002 outbreak. But they also reported that it was 96.2% identical to a coronavirus sequence in their possession called RaTG13, which was previously detected in “Yunnan province.” They concluded that RaTG13 was the closest known relative to SARS-CoV-2.

In the following months, as researchers around the world hunted for any known bat virus that might be a progenitor of SARS-CoV-2, Shi Zhengli offered shifting and sometimes contradictory accounts of where RaTG13 had come from and when it was fully sequenced. Searching a publicly available library of genetic sequences, several teams, including a group of DRASTIC researchers, soon realized that RaTG13 appeared identical to RaBtCoV/4991—the virus from the cave where the miners fell ill in 2012 with what looked like COVID-19.

In July, as questions mounted, Shi Zhengli told Science magazine that her lab had renamed the sample for clarity. But to skeptics, the renaming exercise looked like an effort to hide the sample’s connection to the Mojiang mine.

Their questions multiplied the following month when Shi, Daszak, and their colleagues published an account of 630 novel coronaviruses they had sampled between 2010 and 2015. Combing through the supplementary data, DRASTIC researchers were stunned to find eight more viruses from the Mojiang mine that were closely related to RaTG13 but had not been flagged in the account. Alina Chan of the Broad Institute said it was “mind-boggling” that these crucial puzzle pieces had been buried without comment.

In October 2020, as questions about the Mojiang mine shaft intensified, a team of journalists from the BBC tried to access the mine itself. They were tailed by plainclothes police officers and found the road conveniently blocked by a broken-down truck.
Clearly, it's just a series of highly amusing coincidences that Shi renamed the RaTG13 sample for clarity, and she, Daszak, and their colleagues all just so happened to omit the deadly viruses found in the Yunnan mine when publishing their account listing the hundreds of coronaviruses they'd otherwise previously encountered in recent years. And how unfortunate that a broken-down truck coincidentally blocked the BBC from accessing the mine! Good thing some helpful plainclothes constabulary were there to safely guide them on their way.

It's likely just another coincidence that the very same U.S. State Department official, Christopher Park, involved in the 2017 decision to lift a U.S. government moratorium on funding for gain-of-function research, advised the director of the State Department’s Biological Policy Staff in the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation "not to say anything that would point to the U.S. government’s own role in gain-of-function research," according to the documentation of the meeting obtained by Vanity Fair. And an internal memo obtained by Vanity Fair from Thomas DiNanno, former acting assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance, also "warned" leaders within his bureau "not to pursue an investigation into the origin of COVID-19" because it would “‘open a can of worms’ if it continued."

(And yes, I realise none of the above necessarily equates to "proof" of anything, but it's still awfully fucking fishy).
Last edited by Anonymous Bosch on Fri Jun 04, 2021 11:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins

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That RaTG13 connection was something that come out early on in the pandemic. Respected voice Trevor Bedford commented on it here in February of 2020:



Important details regarding the difference between it and SARS-CoV-2:
And in fact we see that the RaTG13 lineage has 79 amino acid changes and 563 nucleotide changes for a ratio of 14.2%. Thus we see that the outbreak virus has a similar distribution of nucleotide vs amino acid changes as its closest bat virus relative. Additionally, I thought to look at the distribution of amino acid changes across genes in the virus genome. In this case, we see highly similar distributions between the nCoV lineage and its closest bat virus relative. Looking at mutation distributions, it appears that the genetic differences in #nCoV2019 are consistent with differences expected to arise during natural evolution, as I would expect engineering to have a distorted AA to nuc ratio and to focus on changing a subset of genes
To be clear, I'm still not saying the Chinese researchers aren't hiding things, but I'm still firmly in the camp that the evidence suggesting this was a lab-made virus has yet to be established.
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Re: The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins

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Anonymous Bosch wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 11:39 pm(And yes, I realise none of the above necessarily equates to "proof" of anything, but it's still awfully fucking fishy).
What I find 'awfully fucking fishy' is this VF article somehow falls out at the exact time the GOP is making this argument and it is being used to rehabilitate Trump's image. This stuff all might be true -- though still highly unlikely -- but the fact remains that it seems there is a reasonable chance this is part of a targeted misinformation campaign. It's way too convenient that all these stories converged at the same time and out pops a political strategy for the mid-terms next year. We all need to be way smarter than this.
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Re: The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins

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malchior wrote: Sun Jun 06, 2021 5:04 am
Anonymous Bosch wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 11:39 pm(And yes, I realise none of the above necessarily equates to "proof" of anything, but it's still awfully fucking fishy).
What I find 'awfully fucking fishy' is this VF article somehow falls out at the exact time the GOP is making this argument and it is being used to rehabilitate Trump's image. This stuff all might be true -- though still highly unlikely -- but the fact remains that it seems there is a reasonable chance this is part of a targeted misinformation campaign. It's way too convenient that all these stories converged at the same time and out pops a political strategy for the mid-terms next year. We all need to be way smarter than this.
Correlation does not equal causation, and you're off your rocker if you suspect Vanity Fair is sympathetic towards the rehabilitation of Trump's image. The VF article makes this perfectly self-evident, e.g. :
vanityfair.com wrote:At times, it seemed the only other people entertaining the lab-leak theory were crackpots or political hacks hoping to wield COVID-19 as a cudgel against China. President Donald Trump’s former political adviser Steve Bannon, for instance, joined forces with an exiled Chinese billionaire named Guo Wengui to fuel claims that China had developed the disease as a bioweapon and purposefully unleashed it on the world. As proof, they paraded a Hong Kong scientist around right-wing media outlets until her manifest lack of expertise doomed the charade.

With disreputable wing nuts on one side of them and scornful experts on the other, the DRASTIC researchers often felt as if they were on their own in the wilderness, working on the world’s most urgent mystery. They weren’t alone. But investigators inside the U.S. government asking similar questions were operating in an environment that was as politicized and hostile to open inquiry as any Twitter echo chamber. When Trump himself floated the lab-leak hypothesis last April, his divisiveness and lack of credibility made things more, not less, challenging for those seeking the truth.



And yet, in the wake of the Lancet statement and under the cloud of Donald Trump’s toxic racism, which contributed to an alarming wave of anti-Asian violence in the U.S., one possible answer to this all-important question remained largely off-limits until the spring of 2021.



With President Trump out of office, it should be possible to reject his xenophobic agenda and still ask why, in all places in the world, did the outbreak begin in the city with a laboratory housing one of the world’s most extensive collection of bat viruses, doing some of the most aggressive research?



Then, the bomb-thrower-in-chief weighed in. At a press briefing just hours later, Trump contradicted his own intelligence officials and claimed that he had seen classified information indicating that the virus had come from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Asked what the evidence was, he said, “I can’t tell you that. I’m not allowed to tell you that.”

Trump’s premature statement poisoned the waters for anyone seeking an honest answer to the question of where COVID-19 came from.



Part of the fault lay with the Trump administration, which had failed to counter China’s control over the scope of the mission when it was being hammered out two months earlier.



The United States deserves a healthy share of blame as well. Thanks to their unprecedented track record of mendacity and race-baiting, Trump and his allies had less than zero credibility. And the practice of funding risky research via cutouts like EcoHealth Alliance enmeshed leading virologists in conflicts of interest at the exact moment their expertise was most desperately needed.
Last edited by Anonymous Bosch on Sun Jun 06, 2021 12:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins

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IF this thing escaped from a lab, then we need to know.

Not because it means that China is responsible or Trump was right, but for the same reason we rip a plane apart whenever it crashes - we need to know what went wrong, so we can make sure it never happens again. China is one of the richest and most powerful countries in the world. I'm sure their lab safety protocols are second to none. So if this thing escaped from one of their top laboratories, that means there's a hole. We need to find that hole, and patch it - not just in Wuhan, but worldwide.
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Re: The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins

Post by Anonymous Bosch »

Little Raven wrote: Sun Jun 06, 2021 12:36 pm IF this thing escaped from a lab, then we need to know.

Not because it means that China is responsible or Trump was right, but for the same reason we rip a plane apart whenever it crashes - we need to know what went wrong, so we can make sure it never happens again. China is one of the richest and most powerful countries in the world. I'm sure their lab safety protocols are second to none. So if this thing escaped from one of their top laboratories, that means there's a hole. We need to find that hole, and patch it - not just in Wuhan, but worldwide.
I'm certainly not, and evidently, neither was the State Department:
washingtonpost.com wrote:Two years before the novel coronavirus pandemic upended the world, U.S. Embassy officials visited a Chinese research facility in the city of Wuhan several times and sent two official warnings back to Washington about inadequate safety at the lab, which was conducting risky studies on coronaviruses from bats. The cables have fueled discussions inside the U.S. government about whether this or another Wuhan lab was the source of the virus — even though conclusive proof has yet to emerge.

In January 2018, the U.S. Embassy in Beijing took the unusual step of repeatedly sending U.S. science diplomats to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), which had in 2015 become China’s first laboratory to achieve the highest level of international bioresearch safety (known as BSL-4). WIV issued a news release in English about the last of these visits, which occurred on March 27, 2018. The U.S. delegation was led by Jamison Fouss, the consul general in Wuhan, and Rick Switzer, the embassy’s counselor of environment, science, technology and health. Last week, WIV erased that statement from its website, though it remains archived on the Internet.

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.

“During interactions with scientists at the WIV laboratory, they noted the new lab has a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory,” states the Jan. 19, 2018, cable, which was drafted by two officials from the embassy’s environment, science and health sections who met with the WIV scientists. (The State Department declined to comment on this and other details of the story.)
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Re: The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins

Post by Smoove_B »

Article written by trusted voices:
The Wuhan institute’s most recent chimeric virus used a very different coronavirus as its genetic backbone. Looking at the body of research produced there, it’s clear that scientists were laser-focused on the bat viruses related to SARS-CoV, which spurred research on coronaviruses worldwide after it emerged in 2003 because of its pandemic potential. There’s just no trace of SARS-CoV-2 in the lab, and if the SARS-CoV-2 progenitor or its building blocks weren’t in the lab before the pandemic, the pandemic could not have started there — even accidentally. This precludes the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 evolved via serial passage in cell culture, or repeated rounds of infection of other cells in a lab, as do other observations about the virus. In standard cell culture, features like the furin cleavage site that are crucial for transmission and disease in humans are rapidly lost as the virus begins adapting to the vervet monkey kidney cells typically used to grow it. For the past 18 months, virologists around the world have been studying SARS-CoV-2 in the laboratory, and they have not seen any evidence that it becomes more dangerous to humans in the lab. The opposite is true: The virus loses features key to transmissibility and virulence, forcing researchers to innovate new culture methods to allow the study of antivirals or vaccines.
In summary:
It does seem like quite a coincidence that the pandemic started in Wuhan, which has one of the world’s leading coronavirus research labs, and that’s surely helped raise questions about a possible leak. But in addition to being a coronavirus research center, Wuhan is a city of 11 million people, home to a major transportation hub that is connected to every other part of China, as well as wildlife markets supplied by farms throughout the country. The presence of the lab in the city where the pandemic emerged is simply not suspicious enough on its own to outweigh what we know about the virus.

We agree that researchers should continue to study whether the virus could have emerged from a lab, but this cannot come at the expense of the search for animal hosts that could have transmitted SARS-CoV-2 to humans. Getting better answers will take rigorous scientific work — and cooperation from China. As frustrating as obfuscation by the Chinese government is, the answers are there. If we make accusations and demands that aren’t firmly grounded in evidence, we run the real risk of having no origins investigations at all.
Maybe next year, maybe no go
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Re: The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins

Post by Anonymous Bosch »

Smoove_B wrote: Sun Jun 06, 2021 1:12 pm Article written by trusted voices:
Beyond the fact you seem to agree with 'em, I see no reason to assume said 'voices' are necessarily any more or less trustworthy than that of Jamie Metzl, who sits on the World Health Organization expert advisory committee on human genome editing and served under Senator Joe Biden and in the Clinton administration as the NSC’s director for multilateral affairs. Does his divergent hypothesis make him an untrusted voice?
Last edited by Anonymous Bosch on Sun Jun 06, 2021 1:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins

Post by malchior »

Anonymous Bosch wrote: Sun Jun 06, 2021 12:22 pm
malchior wrote: Sun Jun 06, 2021 5:04 am
Anonymous Bosch wrote: Fri Jun 04, 2021 11:39 pm(And yes, I realise none of the above necessarily equates to "proof" of anything, but it's still awfully fucking fishy).
What I find 'awfully fucking fishy' is this VF article somehow falls out at the exact time the GOP is making this argument and it is being used to rehabilitate Trump's image. This stuff all might be true -- though still highly unlikely -- but the fact remains that it seems there is a reasonable chance this is part of a targeted misinformation campaign. It's way too convenient that all these stories converged at the same time and out pops a political strategy for the mid-terms next year. We all need to be way smarter than this.
Correlation does not equal causation
Profound.
you're off your rocker if you suspect Vanity Fair is sympathetic towards the rehabilitation of Trump's image. The VF article makes this perfectly self-evident
I never argued that VF is colluding with Trump. I said that it is fishy. It could be the author, the argument could have been put in her ear, the timing could be total coincidence, etc. but the way I see it is 'Coincidence takes a lot of planning' as Malcolm Nance says. When everyone, anywhere, much less in a malignancy like the GOP starts yelling about something I suspect motive. And we actually got quite of bit of information about the motive too - when Trump said it out loud this weekend. It is foolish not to see this for what it could be. Much like it'd be foolish to completely ignore the possibility of the leak.
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