Trump's Former CDC Director Says He Still Thinks SARS-CoV-2 Originated In a Lab (axios.com) 236
Beeftopia shares a report from Axios: Former CDC Director Robert Redfield told CNN on Friday that he believes the coronavirus "escaped" from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and that it was spreading as early as September or October of 2019 -- though he stressed that it was his "opinion." "I'm of the point of view that I still think the most likely etiology of this pathology in Wuhan was from a laboratory. Escaped. Other people don't believe that. That's fine. Science will eventually figure it out," Redfield told CNN's Sanjay Gupta... "That's not implying any intentionality. It's my opinion, right...?"
Axios calls it "a stunning assertion, offered with little evidence," even though Redfield "is a career virologist," argues Slashdot reader Beeftopia. "He received his medical degree from Georgetown University before conducting his residency at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center as a US Army officer. Both of his parents were scientists at the National Institutes of Health. Before starting his position as the director of the CDC, Redfield was a professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and was once one of the US Army's leading AIDS researchers. He does have a controversial incident regarding an AIDS vaccine on which his lab was working." In fact, Kaiser Health News reports Redfield had been the principal investigator for clinical trials of a treatment vaccine: "Either he was egregiously sloppy with data or it was fabricated," said former Air Force Lt. Col. Craig Hendrix, a doctor who is now director of the division of clinical pharmacology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "It was somewhere on that spectrum, both of which were serious and raised questions about his trustworthiness...." Washington Senator Patty Murray, the ranking Democrat on the health committee, cited the research controversy as an example of a "pattern of ethically and morally questionable behavior" by Redfield that should prompt the president to reconsider the appointment.
Earlier this month, a member of the WHO investigative team said wildlife farms in southern China are the most likely source of the COVID-19 pandemic. Peter Daszak, a disease ecologist with EcoHealth Alliance and part of the WHO delegation that traveled to China earlier this year, told NPR that the Chinese government thought those farms were the most probable pathway for a coronavirus in bats in southern China to reach humans in Wuhan.
Axios calls it "a stunning assertion, offered with little evidence," even though Redfield "is a career virologist," argues Slashdot reader Beeftopia. "He received his medical degree from Georgetown University before conducting his residency at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center as a US Army officer. Both of his parents were scientists at the National Institutes of Health. Before starting his position as the director of the CDC, Redfield was a professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and was once one of the US Army's leading AIDS researchers. He does have a controversial incident regarding an AIDS vaccine on which his lab was working." In fact, Kaiser Health News reports Redfield had been the principal investigator for clinical trials of a treatment vaccine: "Either he was egregiously sloppy with data or it was fabricated," said former Air Force Lt. Col. Craig Hendrix, a doctor who is now director of the division of clinical pharmacology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "It was somewhere on that spectrum, both of which were serious and raised questions about his trustworthiness...." Washington Senator Patty Murray, the ranking Democrat on the health committee, cited the research controversy as an example of a "pattern of ethically and morally questionable behavior" by Redfield that should prompt the president to reconsider the appointment.
Earlier this month, a member of the WHO investigative team said wildlife farms in southern China are the most likely source of the COVID-19 pandemic. Peter Daszak, a disease ecologist with EcoHealth Alliance and part of the WHO delegation that traveled to China earlier this year, told NPR that the Chinese government thought those farms were the most probable pathway for a coronavirus in bats in southern China to reach humans in Wuhan.
On any complex issue, how do you get information? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're not actually doing the virus research, you then have to rely on expert opinion for your information (this is true of almost anything [xkcd.com] from physics to meteorology to biology). Some people have relied on politicians or Youtube figures, or broadcasters. Others rely on medical and/or scientific bodies. Here's a guy who's an acclaimed career virologist [umaryland.edu] who said:
Redfield said that he thought it unlikely a disease that originated in bats - as many experts believe - so swiftly “became one of the most infectious viruses that we know in humanity for human-to-human transmission,” but added that he was not saying release of the virus was intentional. [reuters.com]
He leaves plenty of wiggle room (it's his opinion, science will figure it out), but at this point, I can't simply dismiss the theory because the New York Times does.
He didn't "leave wiggle room" (Score:4, Insightful)
Never mind that experts have been warning us for well over 30 years that deforestation and wet markets made this kind of pandemic inevitable.
This is a political move. He sold out. The goal here is to shift blame to China and away from Trump and the GOP.
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Re: He didn't "leave wiggle room" (Score:2)
Is it claimed that it was engineered in said lab, or just looked, it passed through there but was out in the wild before?
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The problem, this kind if idiotic rabidly left-wing thinking attempts to override a fact-based determination by asserting that anyone who even suggests it originated in a Chinese lab is racist.
This is wildly uninformed, religiously-based thinking. China is a political entity - not a race - and Chinese history is replete with examples of how peasants were sacrificed for the benefit of their overlords. Asserting that assigning blame to the Chinese ruling class is somehow racist is so politically ignorant it
No, they're just "asking questions" right? (Score:3, Interesting)
We know it didn't come from a lab because a) the virus has been found in the wild for 10 years now with epidemiologists warning a pandemic was coming and and b) any lab modifications done (and there would have been modifications during study) would show up in tests.
It's also to be expected there's a bio lab there because Wuhan is a *massive* city. You can find these kind of labs dotted all over the United States.
I can debunk these points all day (I have
Re:No, they're just "asking questions" right? (Score:5, Informative)
"b) any lab modifications done (and there would have been modifications during study) would show up in tests."
"Chan pointed out a detail no one else had noticed: COVID-19 contains an uncommon genetic sequence that has been used by genetic engineers in the past to insert genes into coronaviruses without leaving a trace, and it falls at the exact point that would allow experimenters to swap out different genetic parts to change the infectivity."
https://www.bostonmagazine.com... [bostonmagazine.com]
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It shows traces of being modified without leaving a trace? That doesn't make any sense.
Re:No, they're just "asking questions" right? (Score:5, Informative)
Try reading it this way:
"The viral genome happens to have a target for a gene-engineering splicing tool. It is located at exactly the place in the genome where swapping code segments to make the virus capable of infecting humans would need to be done. Using the tool to change the code at that location leaves no trace other than the changed code. The convenient target is not itself evidence that the code was changed - but it does show that engineering intervention, rather than natural mutation, would be easy."
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b) It depends on how the modifications were done.
It's also expected that lab-leaks happen near to labs. A lab leak of a dangerous coronovirus in China would happen in Wuhan, because that's where the only BSL-4 lab is located.
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A lab leak of a dangerous coronovirus in China would happen in Wuhan, because that's where the only BSL-4 lab is located.
There are two, actually, but the other one [wikipedia.org] would have been less likely to be studying these types of viruses (not that it matters for the sake of circumstantial evidence).
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It's also to be expected there's a bio lab there because Wuhan is a *massive* city. You can find these kind of labs dotted all over the United States.
Wrong! There are only two BSL-4 labs [wikipedia.org] in all of China (the other one just achieved BSL4 status in 2018). Being just across the river from the first documented outbreak is, at the least, suspicious.
Read your own link (Score:2)
Yes, this might be a higher security lab, but it didn't _need_ to be. If anything being higher security makes it much, much less likely anything got out of it. You're disproving your own points.
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Yes, this might be a higher security lab, but it didn't _need_ to be. If anything being higher security makes it much, much less likely anything got out of it. You're disproving your own points.
So you're saying less equipped labs handle equally dangerous pathogens with the same frequency?
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It doesn't need to be "at the same frequency" when there are a lot more of the lower level labs.
But there's minimal evidence that any lab was involved. It's certainly a possibility, but hardly more than that, and irrelevant to anything serious anyway, so why belabor the point. Other explanations suffice. Suspicions aren't helpful in any way, not even in deciding of whether to trust the Chinese government or not. (We know that they lied about how serious it was for months. That I think is was everybody
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You don't need a BSL-4 rated lab to work with these pathogens and study them. These viruses are studied all over China (and much of the world).
What's suspicious is that you use the term "just across the river" to describe what is actually "several km away" in a densely populated city. Also suspicious is that you talk about the "first documented outbreak" for a virus that we now know to have in circulation for several months before that first documented outbreak.
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I don't think so. Most evidence I've encountered says that the virus only uses a couple of means of attack. (Actually most says only one, but a few sources list a second.) Unfortunately, a large number of cells in a wide variety of organs are susceptible to that particular attack. So it's not evidence of "targeted to attack humanity" so much as "targeted to optimally reproduce and spread" which is what you expect of an evolved virus.
On this point note that all the virus candidates attack the same portio
Re: No, they're just "asking questions" right? (Score:2)
Youâ(TM)re again conflating âoeescaped from lab in accidentâ with âoecreated by evil scientists in a lab.â Heâ(TM)s not saying itâ(TM)s man-made, just that it originated in a lab where these viruses are studied. His assertion isnâ(TM)t crazy nor has it been debunked. Youâ(TM)re arguing against a straw man.
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Even for that limited interpretation, the evidence is insufficient. To assert it as a possibility would be reasonable. To "believe" it is evidence of either "secret information that we're withholding from you peons", or strong bias, or lack of intelligence (or political aspirations combined with lying).
I can't think of any honest and honorable reason to make that assertion. And I don't think he's stupid.
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Even if the exact same virus had been found in the wild, that would not be proof it didn't come from a lab. And that's not true. What we know is that close relatives of the COVID virus existed in the wild.
Your point A combines two threads inappropriately. Yes, there have long been warnings that the way we were acting a pandemic would eventually show up. They didn't predict any particular pandemic.
Your point B overstates the case. There could certainly be lab modifications that would not show up.
So your
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As I hear it, It also happens to be the lab with the world's largest collection of bat coronavirus species, collected from the wild. It's where they were researched.
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Quick web search -- less than 30 BL4 buildings in the world -- and this started next to one of them?
It would make sense then -- the political reaction to this virus has never made sense -- why throw economies under a bus with measures such as closing shops, wearing masks, and staying indoors, when all these measures do not stop an airborne virus, and merely "slowing it down" does not result in fewer deaths anyway, and by some estimates, actually increase deaths in the long run? It doesn't make sense as a st
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Correction:
In other words, I believe the fear narrative only makes sense if they knew where this thing had come from.
I don't find your arguments convincing. I can envision multiple scenarios, most of which don't assume anything other than bureaucratic "I want to look good to my superiors, so I'll fail to tell people what's happening" combined with someone later going "O, Shit! This stuff is serious.". And the first people to go "O, Shit! " being roundly suppressed by the bureaucrats who are still tryin
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that is less than a kilometer from the wet market where COVID-19 exploded.
Wow, that gross error makes the level of your fact-checking abundantly clear!
Rather than take pages to talk about probabilities, I'll just say the the BSL-4 lab is thirteen kilometres away, not one., on the other side of the Yangtze. Why do the conspiracy nutjob sites you read feel compelled to make such obvious and gross distortions?
And why are you so eager to suck up every factoid that supports your conspiracy, no matter how bad the source?
I'm no fan of China, but Hanlon's razor applies h
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"For good measure, almost in passing, Chan pointed out a detail no one else had noticed: COVID-19 contains an uncommon genetic sequence that has been used by genetic engineers in the past to insert genes into coronaviruses without leaving a trace, and it falls at the exact point that would allow experimenters to swap out different genetic parts to change the infectivity. That same sequence can occur naturally in a coronavirus, so this was not irrefutable proof of an unnatural origin, Chan explained, “
Re:He didn't "leave wiggle room" (Score:5, Informative)
The MIT Technology Review has an article on the subject [technologyreview.com]:
Did the coronavirus leak from a lab? These scientists say we shouldn’t rule it out.
For many scientists, challenging the idea that SARS-CoV-2 has natural origins is seen as career suicide. But a vocal few say it shouldn't be disregarded or lumped in with conspiracy theories.
by Charles Schmidt
March 18, 2021
[Nikolai] Petrovksy is a professor at Flinders University, near Adelaide, and he is also founder and chairman of a company called Vaxine that develops immunizations for infectious diseases, among other projects. Since 2005, he’s received tens of millions of dollars in funding from the US National Institutes of Health to support the development of vaccines and compounds called adjuvants that boost their effects. After Chinese scientists posted a draft genome of the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, the disease culprit in Wuhan, Petrovksy—who by this time had put skiing on the back burner to work from his Colorado home office—directed his colleagues down under to run computer modeling studies of the viral sequence, a first step toward designing a vaccine.
This generated a startling result: the spike proteins studding SARS-CoV-2 bound more tightly to their human cell receptor, a protein called ACE2, than target receptors on any other species evaluated. In other words, SARS-CoV-2 was surprisingly well adapted to its human prey, which is unusual for a newly emerging pathogen. “Holy shit, that’s really weird,’” Petrovsky recalls thinking.
As Petrovsky considered whether SARS-CoV-2 might have emerged in lab cultures with human cells, or cells engineered to express the human ACE2 protein, a letter penned by 27 scientists appeared suddenly on February 19 in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet. The authors insisted that SARS-CoV-2 had a natural origin, and they condemned any alternate hypotheses as conspiracy theories that create only “fear, rumors, and prejudice.”
Petrovksy says he found the letter infuriating. Conspiracy theorists is “the last thing we were,” he says, “and it looked to be pointing at people like us.”
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which is unusual for a newly emerging pathogen
Except it's not at all. This is precisely what happens when pathogens mutate and jump interspecies. The guy may be thinking "holy shit that's really weird" because the times it happens is rare, but you don't need some evil bioscience conspiracy to describe what has been happening naturally for thousands of years.
For many scientists, challenging the idea that SARS-CoV-2 has natural origins is seen as career suicide.
That I agree with though. Just like scientists at this point challenging global warming should also be seen as career suicide. The result of such challenges normally demonstrate either a lack of sci
Re: He didn't "leave wiggle room" (Score:2)
Evidence that immediately after the initial interspecies jump viruses bind to the new species better than they do the origination species with any sort of regularity?
What a weird selfcontradiction (Score:2)
Isn't an uncommon genetic sequence kind of a big trace. "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you can tell the defendant is guilty because he brought a body to 'We Dissolve Bodies in Acid, LLC', receipts, CC statements and witness statements over here. That's a common way to destroy evidence of a murder."
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And China has made every effort to obfuscate and deny open access to evidence. So, there's that.
> The goal here is to shift blame to China and away from Trump and the GOP.
Are you seriously claiming that the virus, which undeniably first appeared in China, originated with Trump and the GOP?
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Well, he didn't suggest the virus had been modified by a lab, only that it had escaped from a lab. Lab accidents happen, and having one wouldn't turn China into a supervillain (could argue they are trying on other fronts, though).
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Deforestation, yes. Wet markets, not so much,,,, or at least not specifically, or the way people might think.
Deforestation forces wildlife that would not ordinarily have contact with humans into closer proximity with them, making contact with a creature carrying an pathogen that has not yet found its way into the human genome far more likely. This is almost certai
Re: He didn't "leave wiggle room" (Score:2)
Oh OK. That's a convincing argument. There's no denying all that evidence and proof you provide. You convinced me.
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Re: He didn't "leave wiggle room" (Score:2)
No, I'm saying what you are claiming is BS and you provide no proof or even evidence to back it up. There's a reason for that.
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Re: On any complex issue, how do you get informati (Score:2)
That misses the actual story of Covid and why it's so nasty: it keeps mutating. Horrible useless trait for a bioweapon. You can argue the lab was studying a natural virus that was in bats and it escaped, but when there's a markets selling bat meat... Then you have it popping up in historic blood samples in Europe way early:
https://www.newsweek.com/covid... [newsweek.com]
So really no one knows.
Re:On any complex issue, how do you get informatio (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not dismissing the lab accident hypothesis, because lab accidents are a well known phenomenon.
I am dismissing Redfield. Unless he gives reasons and shows his work, his opinion has to be assessed based on his reliability.
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You're not helping by overstating your case. The virus has not been found for 10 years. Obviously related viruses have been found. SARS-CoV-2 is not special, it's a run of the mill coronavirus, part of an extensive family of simple viruses endemic in animals, which are known to easily mutate, and have been tagged by epidemiologists for decades as a potential reservoir for crossover infection to humans.
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The virus has not been found for 10 years.
Based on? The prevailing theory is that it jumped inter species. In those regards viruses very much in their final form can linger for years without spreading to another species and then suddenly explode in the new population.
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From what I've read on the issue, various Chinese labs do research on viruses, even ones from bats. The U.S. used to have researchers there observing the labs. They reported bad protection and security, and that the U.S. should spend some dough and the expertise to help get them up to scratch. The last alleged administration canceled that and removed the researchers. It is possible for a virus to have escaped from one of the labs and not be part of a weapons program.
That said, the former alleged president's
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I can't simply dismiss the theory because the New York Times does.
Why is your choice the New York Times or this expert you single handedly picked? There are immunologists and virologists all over the world. What you could do is look at if any of them state what approaches a general consensus, and then when you go to your sources counterting that demand some actual evidence rather than an appeal to authority.
Appeals to Authority only works when the authority is in consensus, to go against that requires something more.
Also Global warming is fake. You can quote me on that. T
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In weighing the credibility of Redfield's opinions, we can look at one specific claim he makes for which there is a mountain of available evidence -- 'that it was spreading as early as September or October of 2019'.
No one has ever produced a sample of the virus genome collected earlier than December 2019. No one. What is more every virus sequence ever identified forms part of a single tree whose origin root can be dated by examining the rate of mutation in the genome. There have been multiple studies of thi
He also gave no evidence (Score:2, Interesting)
I wonder what he'll be given in exchange for giving up his medical and scientific principles. Will it have been worth it?
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It does seem extremely unlikely that China released this virus on purpose. What would the government possibly gain by releasing it? And why on earth would the release it in China before anywhere else? If it was released, it was an accident.
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It does seem extremely unlikely that China released this virus on purpose. What would the government possibly gain by releasing it? And why on earth would the release it in China before anywhere else? If it was released, it was an accident.
Thinking in a zero-sum way, China's more free wheeling adversaries took much more damage than China did and this could have been predicted. Releasing it in China first is easier and gives plausible deniability.
However, I don't think the Chinese government is that diabolical. They certainly play the long game but this is the sort of insanity I would expect from a James Bond film, not reality.
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we know this because if it had been there would be signs of the modifications and engineering that go into a virus that's been worked on in a lab.
What signs? Have you researched this, or are you quoting someone? If you know what signs you are talking about, we can have a discussion. If you don't, go look it up and then we can have a discussion, after you understand the topic.
Because I have looked it up, and I'd like to have an informed conversation with someone on the topic.
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The study reports that they didn't start with SARS-CoV or MERS etc and genetically engineer a new virus, because if they had, the computer models wouldn't have predicted the mutations SARS-CoV-2 has would have been so effective, so they would have targeted different mutations.
Not only is it preposterous to draw that conclusion from that evi
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we know this because if it had been there would be signs of the modifications and engineering that go into a virus that's been worked on in a lab. Those signs are not there. Every indication is that the virus was naturally occurring.
This is provably wrong. Are you a sock puppet for Chinese propaganda?
Read Unusual Features of the SARS-CoV-2 Genome Suggesting Sophisticated Laboratory Modification Rather Than Natural Evolution and Delineation of Its Probable Synthetic Route [researchgate.net] for your education and stop spreading lies.
Re:He also gave no evidence (Score:5, Insightful)
Read Unusual Features of the SARS-CoV-2 Genome Suggesting Sophisticated Laboratory Modification Rather Than Natural Evolution and Delineation of Its Probable Synthetic Route [researchgate.net] for details.
Occam's razor applies here: How can a natural mutation make the virus especially well adapted to humans (and at the same time no longer infectious to animals) while the rest (where mutations affect its transmission and survival less) stay unchanged?
More cause for suspicion: How come we have read a flood of articles since April 2020 which all claimed "It cannot have originated from a lab" while one is right next to the original outbreak? Why shouldn't Chinese PR have tried to encourage an avalanche of such articles? Why is China so cranky when Australia asks for more research on the origin of the Corona virus? The list goes on.
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You want the true narrative, here it is:
China wants to look efficient, trustworthy, and competent. Parts of the chinese government aren't, and those try to hide themselves, sometimes in ways that result in widespread notice and disaster.
You don't need to add anything to that to explain everything that happened, down to the current stonewalling of investigations.
Originated != Engineered (Score:2, Insightful)
To be clear, he's saying this is a natural virus, which was isolated from animals in a lab for study, and it spread to humans in that setting. He's not saying that it was engineered or was some biological weapon, etc.
There is at least some credibility to that, because what else would a virology lab be studying? It's very reasonable that this particular virus was in that lab, since it was indigenous to the "wild" animals being farmed in that region. The Chinese government fully supported and invested in t
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That is further evidence that the lab had isolated the samples from those populations and thus the original sources (the farms) were immediately known and destroyed for safety reasons.
They figured it might have come from animals so they killed all the animals and disinfected everything.
Reading anything more into it will require substantial evidence.
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In another article related to this CNN interview, he does suggest there was "gain of function [independent.co.uk]" research likely happening at the lab, not for nefarious purpose, and that the virus escaped:
“But I am a virologist. I have spent my life in virology. I do not believe this somehow came from a bat to a human, and at that moment in time, the virus came to the human, became one of the most infectious viruses that we know in humanity for human-to-human transmission,” he said.
“Normally when a pathogen goes from zoonotic to a human, it takes a while for it to figure out how to become more and more efficient in human-to-human transmission.”
The ex-director suggested that the virus learned that increased virility from gain of function research in an attempt to better understand and combat future coronavirus outbreaks.
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Normally when a pathogen goes from zoonotic to a human, it takes a while for it to figure out how to become more and more efficient in human-to-human transmission.
Does he think Spanish flu was a lab escape too?
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If you want to start blaming people in the United States you can start with that idiot Cuomo. He forced nursing homes to take in infected patients because the hospitals were big contributors to his campaign. Yet he remains in office despit
Trump didn't do a travel ban (Score:2)
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Would you feel the same if the virus were said to have come from Russia -- from a Putin's lab?
My guess is no.
With that, and while I think Trump's response was in large part correct -- do not let people despair and work on vaccine as fast as possible -- I too do not see value in saying that China is to blame, even if true. For one thing I don't think they meant it, but more importantly dying or being very sick from covid or having it happened to a loved one is easier on the person if they think it is a natur
Quite Possible (Score:2)
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Re: Quite Possible (Score:2, Troll)
Well I guess we can trust them. I mean it's not like China is ruled by a repressive authoritarian regime which disappears swathes of people before breakfast or anything.
Have you considered the merits of this thing we call 'thinking? University studies have shown that 'thinking' aids in the construction of arguments better than your current "fingerpainting with my frontal lobe"-level efforts.
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Wait what? What other countries had it before Wuhan?
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Except that it was in other countries prior to the Wuhan outbreak. A better explanation is that it was identified in Wuhan first because, you know, there was a virology lab nearby. Most doctors who saw it then would have just diagnosed pneumonia.
A few scientific studies say that it was in other countries prior to the Wuhan outbreak. There are plentiful reasons why those few studies might be wrong. No one has managed to reproduce their findings yet, and their protocol was sloppy. (The Italian one didn't even try testing really old samples, to get a known negative, IIRC)
I bet those "early COVID" results will be refuted.
"Trump's"? (Score:2)
That's one thing I learned. I had no idea he was appointed by Trump. I had nievely assumed it was a scientific role and earned by merit.
Meanwhile, in Real Science ... (Score:4, Interesting)
It's hilarious to see all the people here quoting studies from last Spring "disproving" the subsequent science.
People who want to follow the evidence for a lab leak hypothesis should follow Yuri Deigin. I see he has a few new high-caliber papers linked in the past week:
https://twitter.com/ydeigin [twitter.com]
If you're already upset, note that I said 'evidence', not 'proof' and then take a moment to reevaluate your political priors.
The easy way to do this is to ask yourself what evidence you would need to accept the hypothesis as not falsified. If there is none, then just move on to a subject that you can handle dispassionately. If there is criteria then look and see what scientists are actually claiming.
It's sad for America that most of the exploration for this idea is being done overseas. Too many Americans can't even look at the idea without saying something about the Orange Man, so mostly Europeans are doing the analysis.
Remember - failing to support the hypothesis is still good science.
It literally doesn't matter anymore at this point (Score:3, Insightful)
back to movies (Score:2)
Just what we needed (Score:2)
For more hate attacks on Asian âAmericans.
Deny deny deny (Score:2)
Here's what I know for sure: If it happened and the Chinese government knows it, they'll never tell. So kind of moot really.
WHO has no credibility (Score:3)
On January 14, 2020, WHO made the following statement: "Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China,"
At the time the outbreak was sweeping through Wuhan and the Chinese government was already taking steps to mitigate its spread. The Chinese government lied, WHO repeated that lie. Now we see the Chinese government claiming the pandemic started on a farm, far away from the epicenter of the pandemic. Sure.
Ho hum (Score:5, Interesting)
"Without evidence." There is plenty of evidence, such as for example that the Wuhan lab works/ed on that type of virus, that it is extremely close to the place where the infection was first detected, that there had been previous accidents at that lab, that current protocols were not being followed due to lack of resources, and that the Chinese authorities are working overtime to prevent anyone from figuring out what actually happened.
What does seem unlikely is that the Wuhan lab *developed* that virus variant intentionally, though I wouldn't rule that out either. Even more unlikely is that it was developed as a weapon or released intentionally.
As for other "innocuous" theories, there is actually less evidence, the main evidence being that similar viruses are found in bats, which also happen to have been studied at the Wuhan lab, but presumably that is irrelevant.
The fact is that the true origin of the virus will NEVER be known, because the information to determine that has already been either lost or suppressed or both.
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There is no expert in astronomy (or even geology) who thinks the earth is flat. And yet here we have someone who is an expert in their field who thinks the virus escaped from a lab. Who are you to say he's wrong?
Re:And some people still think the Earth is flat. (Score:4, Informative)
Maybe you should read the rest of the summary before calling this man an expert.
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I seem to recall a certain flat earther rocket scientist [wikipedia.org] who got a lesson in gravity the hard way.
This guy pretended to be a flat earther because he got funding for his projects by pretending that. Smart move.
Packaging (Score:3)
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Plus, he's got one of those beards with no mustache, I'm not sure why we should take anyone who thinks that's a good look seriously.
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You're assuming that he's being honest, which I would only give a 50% change of being correct. At that I feel I'm being generous, as he may well have more political ambitions.
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to give these lies credibility. That in turn will a) distract from the massive failures of American leadership during the start of the pandemic (and we all know who was in charge)
Oh, you mean mayors and governors and senators who told people to ignore the virus and go party at Chinese new year?
This is incredibly harmful and this man has the training and experience to know that it is. He's a monster who knows know shame.
But enough about you ...
Re: The problem is that this guy will be used (Score:3, Informative)
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Radiation doesn't need to be ionizing to be potentially harmful (or beneficial). But the evidence that cellphone radiation is significant at modulation cellular processes is at best inconclusive. I'd say it was negative if it weren't for the people who funded the research...as it is I say inconclusive, because there have been enough studies that turned out to be slanted by their funding sources. If you want to call it negative, feel free to do so.
Of course, each new generation of phone uses a different r
Re:The problem is that this guy will be used (Score:4, Insightful)
I can't stand it. Sorry, but this is the dumbest thing I have read all week. I don't usually feed trolls, but here goes, just in case you actually believe any of what you wrote.
First of all, I mostly agree with you on the first part. This is just straight-up standard nepotism, only Trump thinks he inherited actual scientific knowledge or ability from his ancestors.
BUT THEN...
Second, it's IONIZING radiation, not ionized. You can't ionize radiation, it's the radiation that does the ionizing.
Third: Ionizing radiation is nothing special, just electromagnetic radiation (like sound, light, radio waves, etc.) but of a higher energy level or frequency, if you prefer.
Fourth: Cell phone radio frequencies are NOT ionizing radiation. The frequency or energy level is just too low. You need X-rays, gamma rays, or cosmic rays to be "ionizing". Hint: most of them have "ray" in the name. Sorry, but that's straight-up conspiracy theory bullshit there.
Fifth: The real ionizing radiation comes from space; it's everywhere. You cannot shield against it unless you go underground, or use lead, water, or human waste as a shielding material. The bullshit here should be plenty sufficient.
Sixth: Plastic does NOT work as a radiation shield. Unless it's specially treated or combined with other things like metals. Plastic is "RF transparent" which means exactly what it says, radio waves (i.e. radiation) passes through it. Another example of this would be glass, where light passes through it. See?
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Ionized radiation? Can I buy that at Sharper Image?
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That's not evidence for, but it's absolutely not evidence against.
Like everything in the cosmos.
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I don't deny there were massive failures of leadership. Trump almost certainly lost the presidency because he bungled (parts of) the response.
This question of the origin of the virus (Question A) is a totally separate question from the question of whether this was a failure of leadership (Question B). The two should not be mixed and muddied.
There are actual highly regarded virologists saying that it is a [technologyreview.com]
No, it's not separate (Score:2)
And scientists will *never* rule anything out [youtube.com]. So that's hardly a point in favor.
In the end we're all being manipulated, and it's going to have real world harm because we won't take the necessary actions to stop the next pandemic.
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Watch this if
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Yes, it is also possible, however unlikely, that COVID-19 naturally jumped to human hosts from bats and somehow rapidly evolved to the new hosts without anyone noticing.
Of course it is possible. It happens all the time. SARS1, MERS, Ebola, Marburg, H1N1, etc. Spanish Flu being the worst example. They all come from animal hosts.
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The muddy thinking is astonishing. The unwillingness to entertain the possibility it was a lab accident is not because of the truth of falsity of it, but because doing so might:
1) Somehow remove attention from Trump's alleged failures of leadership.
2) Draw attention away from the "real" reason, deforestation, wet markets, etc.
3) Create a prejudiced attitude towards China.
4) Other?
The Lancet article also states that considering anything other than a natural origin would: "The authors insisted that SARS-CoV-2
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It is possible of course but there's 0 evidence for it so why should it be seriously considered.
"Nuclear accident occurs near nuclear facility." Well Duh.
"Virus outbreak occurs near virus facility." NO WAY!
Hmm it's almost if there was something different here.
Like viruses occur naturally in wildlife, and nuclear explosions don't, for example.
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"Nuclear accident occurs near nuclear facility." Well Duh.
Volcano erupts near volcanic research station.
Iceberg calves right near research station studying iceberg calving.
Re: corona virus are widely seen in bats (Score:2)
Feel free to have an hysterical meltdown about it but it's probably best you do so in your safe space wearing your helmet and blanket.