'No Evidence' to Support Trump CDC Director's Theory about Coronavirus Origin (cbsnews.com) 469
While President Trump's former CDC director says he still thinks SARS-Cov-2 somehow originated from a lab in China, "a team of experts from the World Health Organization, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and a number of virology experts have said the evidence to support such a claim just isn't there," reports CBS News:
Redfield, a virologist who headed the CDC under President Trump, stressed several times that this is just his opinion, not a proven fact. "I'm allowed to have opinions now," he said... Dr. Anthony Fauci addressed Redfield's comments at Friday's COVID-19 response briefing and suggested that most public health officials disagree.... Kristian G. Andersen, director of the infectious disease genomics, translational research institute at Scripps Research, told CBS News that "none of (Redfield's) comments" on the lab theory are "backed by available evidence."
"It is clear that not only was he the most disastrous CDC director in U.S. history where he utterly failed in his sworn mission to keep the country safe, but via his comments, he also shows a complete lack of basic evolutionary virology," Andersen said.
Andersen was the lead author of a study published in Nature Medicine last year which found that the virus was a product of natural evolution. Furthermore, through analysis of public genome sequence data, the scientists "found no evidence that the virus was made in a laboratory or otherwise engineered," according to a press release from Scripps. "By comparing the available genome sequence data for known coronavirus strains, we can firmly determine that SARS-CoV-2 originated through natural processes," Andersen said at the time. W. Ian Lipkin, a study co-author with Andersen and the director of the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health, said that while there's still a lot we don't know about the virus, including exactly how long it's been circulating, there is "no evidence" to suggest that it was created in a lab...
Andersen noted that "We know that the first epidemiologically linked cluster of cases came from the Huanan market and we know the virus was found in environmental samples — including animal cages — at the market," he said. "Any 'lab leak' theory would have to account for that scenario — which it simply can't, without invoking a major conspiracy and cover up by Chinese scientists and authorities."
His scathing conclusion: "Redfield has no idea what he's talking about — plain and simple. It's no surprise given his disastrous tenure as CDC director."
"It is clear that not only was he the most disastrous CDC director in U.S. history where he utterly failed in his sworn mission to keep the country safe, but via his comments, he also shows a complete lack of basic evolutionary virology," Andersen said.
Andersen was the lead author of a study published in Nature Medicine last year which found that the virus was a product of natural evolution. Furthermore, through analysis of public genome sequence data, the scientists "found no evidence that the virus was made in a laboratory or otherwise engineered," according to a press release from Scripps. "By comparing the available genome sequence data for known coronavirus strains, we can firmly determine that SARS-CoV-2 originated through natural processes," Andersen said at the time. W. Ian Lipkin, a study co-author with Andersen and the director of the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health, said that while there's still a lot we don't know about the virus, including exactly how long it's been circulating, there is "no evidence" to suggest that it was created in a lab...
Andersen noted that "We know that the first epidemiologically linked cluster of cases came from the Huanan market and we know the virus was found in environmental samples — including animal cages — at the market," he said. "Any 'lab leak' theory would have to account for that scenario — which it simply can't, without invoking a major conspiracy and cover up by Chinese scientists and authorities."
His scathing conclusion: "Redfield has no idea what he's talking about — plain and simple. It's no surprise given his disastrous tenure as CDC director."
'No Evidence' says Xi (Score:2, Insightful)
No evidence at all, says Xi, vigorously brushing his hands together while standing on a particularly lumpy rug.
Re:'No Evidence' says Xi (Score:5, Informative)
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The onus is on you to provide evidence that your claim is plausible, much less probable, even less factual.
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Actually, he does. He claimed to have evidence "it didn't come from a lab."
Actually, he doesn't.
This is a pretty simple concept.
If you claim: "Every cat alive today comes from space."
And I claim: "There is ample evidence that they in fact do not."
I do not need to scour all of space looking for a lack of evidence of cats.
I merely need to find evidence of a cat being born on Earth.
In that vein, the evidence he provided shows with high levels of certainty that the virus originated naturally.
That precludes it originating in a lab, and therefor he does not need to prove that it
Re: 'No Evidence' says Xi (Score:4, Insightful)
You don't need evidence for that. It's the simplest theory that fits all known facts.
It is always the more complex version that requires the proof. That requires something that makes it the simplest theory that fits all known facts.
If I offered the theory that Covid spontaneously evolved because people insisted on putting clotted cream on top of jam on scones, it has no more basis than your explanation.
We reject it because its unnecessarily complex. Not that people should be putting clotted cream on jab.
The simplest theory that fits all known evidence is the first one we turn to, all others MUST offer a reason why they are right.
Re: 'No Evidence' says Xi (Score:5, Insightful)
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs (a man who DID hold a PhD from a tier 1 University).
You offer a claim but back it up only with whatiffery. Won't pass the Sagan Test.
Re:'No Evidence' says Xi (Score:5, Insightful)
No evidence at all, says Xi, vigorously brushing his hands together while standing on a particularly lumpy rug.
China and their government is to blame for so many actual documented atrocities. I don't understand why people need to make up bullshit conspiracies as well. All it does is weaken the actual documented atrocities that really do occur by normalising the idea that everyone blames China for everything.
The "narrative" becomes counter to its own goals.
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China and their government is to blame for so many actual documented atrocities. I don't understand why people need to make up bullshit conspiracies as well. All it does is weaken the actual documented atrocities that really do occur by normalising the idea that everyone blames China for everything.
This, so much this. I would mod you up, but my mod points these days are quickly spent on trying to keep the worst conspiracy junk down.
It's important to blame individuals, not systems (Score:3)
If we talk about the actual causes (deforestation and the wet markets being used to maintain the 5% growth China needs to keep their population docile) this doesn't really work for blame shifting. It's too abstract.
But a lab accident at a bio-weapons facility? That's easy. Blame the Chinese military. If you're lucky you'll get a new cold war and tons of extra spending on weapons in the deal.
It's a blame game. The last administration's response to the pandemic was
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The 'lab origin' hypothesis presented by Dr. Redfield is not a conspiracy theory in my opinion.
In my opinion global warming is a hoax and I even found some guy with Dr in his name that agrees with me. Unfortunately for me when my opinion and the *opinion* of one authority to whom I appeal goes against a widely held consensus I would feel incredibly stupid for having the opinion had I not seen an overwhelming amount of actual evidence. Otherwise people would label me a conspiracy nutbag.
I mean, who conspired with whom?
You don't need to conspire with someone to create a conspiracy. You need to conspire for the benefit of someone, and
Re: 'No Evidence' says Xi (Score:2)
It doesn't change anything of worth.
Still might be true, and still might not be.
Pointless talking about it, imo.
Re: 'No Evidence' says Xi (Score:4, Informative)
The problem is that this article is a giant claim of straw men.
Redfield argued that the virus escaped a lab, not that it was engineered. "Redfield stressed he was not implying "intentionality," and no credible scientist, including Redfield, believes the virus was man-made. " Redfield believes that it was an escaped gain-of-function pathogen: "Most of us in a lab, when trying to grow a virus, we try to help make it grow better, and better, and better, and better, and better, and better so we can do experiments and figure out about it ... It's not unusual for respiratory pathogens that are being worked on in the laboratory to infect the laboratory worker."
Andersen is pretending that Redfield argued that it was engineered (he never did), and points to his own paper showing it wasn't engineered (something Redfield never argued). Except that his paper says " Thus, the high-affinity binding of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein to human ACE2 is most likely the result of natural selection on a human or human-like ACE2 that permits another optimal binding solution to arise", which is precisely what you'd see as the outcome of gain-of-function research, which involves allowing a pathogen to evolve naturally, in controlled conditions at an accelerated pace.
And I'm sorry, but someone working with WHO bashing the CDC? The CDC did a way better job with COVID than the WHO.
(I've noticed how heavily people who want to excuse WIV engage in this strawman - pretending that anyone who argues for an accidental release of gain-of-function research is actually arguing for a deliberate release and/or a genetically engineered virus. Always easiest to attack an argument your opponents aren't making, isn't it?)
Re: 'No Evidence' says Xi (Score:3)
Ok, is there any evidence it was released from a lab?
Re: 'No Evidence' says Xi (Score:3)
No. And nobody says there is any evidence. What the guy claims is nowhere near what some people suggest he claims.
But hey, who cares if someone talks some sense. Simply raging against something we can link to Trump is much more satisfying.
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Circumstantial evidence just means evidence other than testimonial. I wouldn't call anything you mentioned evidence that this virus actually was released from that lab. It is evidence that such a release is a possibility, nothing more.
Such evidence is often justification for investigation.
Absolutely, it should be investigated. It certainly has not been ruled out based on anything I've heard of.
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You're not seriously claiming that as evidence that that's what happened this time are you?
Re:'No Evidence' says Xi (Score:5, Insightful)
"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence"
Pushing a counter-narrative doesn't change the reality!
What reality? What is the proof of that reality? Hitchen's Razor people.
You can start with these: (Score:4, Informative)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9 [nature.com]
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/coronavirus-origins-misinformation-yan-report-fact-check-cvd [nationalgeographic.com]
There's plenty more only a google search away. Our tech for working with viruses is pretty primitive stuff all things considered. It leaves clear markers anyone with a bit of knowledge in the field can see.
Meanwhile we've been warned for 30 years by epidemiologists that destroying bat habitats and cramming wild animals together in wet markets was going to cause a global pandemic.
So what's more likely, China developed biotech that's 50-100 years ahead of the rest of the world and instead of making money off it kept it secret so they could do something, something, something dark side or the thing every expert in the field of viruses has been warning us about for 3 decades finally happened?
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Even the most elementary lab precautions would have worked against COVID, let alone what we see in even the most poorly run labs, let alone a level 4 biohazard lab like this one.
It is a Level 4 Biohazard Lab where the staff told visiting American Diplomats their lab was unsafe and they needed help.
It is infinitely more likely that the virus transmitted during the thousands (millions?) of unnecessary interactions with wild animals humans have due to deforestation and the wet markets.
Yes, never mind the unsafe lab near the wet market, a lab that works with concentrations of the virus higher than that found in nature.
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no, i understand just fine. you fail to provide any link between the two.
Sorry, but no you do not. The staff admitted the lab unsafe. They spoke of 3 very dangerous strains being worked on. They are near the wet market. All this circumstantial evidence makes a proper investigation paramount. Yet the government prevented such an investigation. This is the same government that jailed a doctor for warning other doctors in the region. All of these circumstances lead to attempts to dismiss the lab with "there is no evidence" being purely propaganda in nature. The situation is "no evi
Re:'No Evidence' says Xi (Score:5, Insightful)
If you make the claim that the virus originated from a lab, then back it up by evidence. If you can't then the only thing that left is to believe in it or not. And that's where we enter the territory of religion.
Re:'No Evidence' says Xi (Score:5, Insightful)
It's like asking the defendant in a court of law to prove beyond any doubt that they didn't do what they're accused of.
That's called Proving a Negative. While not impossible a notoriously difficult task that philosophy, natural science, and jurisprudence agreed upon to be too prone to being abused towards a 'bad' outcome to be encouraged.
At this point I'd like people to think about what their endgame would be in this matter.
Is it to assert that the CCP is bad? If yes, then would this thing be a pivotal point?
Personally, I don't think that this would be a pivotal issue, because there's plenty of other things going on, even directly related to this pandemic to show that the CCP are not angles of innocence. For example in the initial phases of the pandemic they suppressed information. That's bad. So in any case, the CCP aren't saints. They're pretty bad according to our Western ethics.
Though this does not absolve the governments of all the other nations of their mismanagement of the situation.
Re:'No Evidence' says Xi (Score:4, Insightful)
That's just the modus operandi of virtually any authoritarian or dictatorial regime that we've seen throughout history.
They want to maintain the strong-man image. So they tend not to admit anything bad happening under their watch, which would undermine the power they claim to have to keep their people safe from harm, trying to keep the facade of being infallible as long as possible (despite many people knowing otherwise). And they do it until it becomes undeniable that something happened at which point they start to shift blame on others.
Reasonable doubt for me at least to not believe the suppressing to be sufficient evidence of a lab-grown virus.
Yes, they would have suppressed information in that case as well. But since suppression of evidence would have happened in any case, whether it was a weaponized virus unleashed on the world on purpose, a weaponized virus escaped from a lab by accident, some non weaponized but still artificially modified virus escaped from a lab by accident, some non weaponized naturally occurring virus that has been studied in a lab and escaped by accident, some naturally occurring virus that hasn't seen the inside of a lab before it was isolated in a human (list not exhaustive), this does not work as an implication.
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"But when you believe that nobody saw it coming, it becomes easier to believe that there was some sort of human activity besides fucking around with bats and pangolins that caused it."
The problem with your argument is that scientists have been warning for years that gain-of-function research where a lab "helps" a virus infect human tissue could eventually lead to a global pandemic. It's more like scientists didn't want to hear: don't experiment with viruses that can cause global pandemics.
2014: "Although in
Re: 'No Evidence' says Xi (Score:4, Insightful)
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Which is identical to a "gain of function" process in a lab. (Which is not "engineering" a virus). Gain of function is just lab accelerated natural evolution. The kind of work that the lab in Wuhan was doing.
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In no way disproves or denies that the virus may well have been collected from the wild, then grown, studied and eventually escaped from a lab.
So while there may be no evidence it came from a Chinese lab (which is how China wants to keep it,
Re: 'No Evidence' says Xi (Score:5, Insightful)
Ummm, it does. The way viruses change in nature in a laboratory is well known and understood.
But you fail the Sagan test. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs.
Opinions require nothing, but if you make a claim - and you have - then back it up or back down.
Re: 'No Evidence' says Xi (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: 'No Evidence' says Xi (Score:5, Insightful)
When investigating an outbreak like this, you don't say "I refuse to investigate a theory if there is no evidence to support it." Rather, you investigate any and all theories you possibly can, and attempt to find evidence which supports or rules them out. There's no evidence ruling out a natural strain escaping the lab and the Chinese government has gone to great lengths to prevent any close examination of that theory. It's not a wild, nigh-impossible theory, so it (along with other theories) ought to be entertained until we can get to the truth.
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Of course that cliche is bullshit but did you include it as an example of BS or are you actually trying to cite a cliche to argue about a conspiracy theory?
Re:'No Evidence' says Xi (Score:5, Insightful)
Pushing a counter-narrative doesn't change the reality!
You absolutely cannot eliminate the possibility that COVID-19 (a naturally occurring virus) adapted to human hosts as the result of gain of function research. Just as there is no evidence that COVID naturally jumped from different species, there is lack of a smoking gun that it escaped from the lab. With both scenarios we only have circumstantial evidence.
Importantly, "made in a lab" has to be understood as "manipulated in a lab". Yes, it is also possible, however unlikely, that COVID-19 naturally jumped to human hosts from bats and somehow rapidly adapted to human hosts without anyone noticing. Presenting zoonotic origin of COVID as the only possible scenario and then claim scientific consensus without evidence (e.g. identifying patient zero) is both unscientific and intellectually dishonest.
Watch this podcast if you want to better understand this topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re: 'No Evidence' says Xi (Score:3)
Other than that being bullshit, what you say is utter crap.
The distinction is complexity. Always start with the simplest, all others have to prove why that is too simple and theirs are better.
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We already know your theory is bullshit [businessinsider.com], or at minimum, that China itself says that the wet market is not the source.
We also know that the wuhan lab was studying coronaviruses and had poor safety protocols [politico.com].
So given that we know it didn't originate in the wet market, and we know that it could have originated in the lab, and we know that the lab had a poor safety record, in fact the best-supported theory to date is that the virus escaped from the lab.
If you've got a better-supported theory, by all means, prov
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Trump's stooge or the CDC, who to believe??
The CDC repeated China's assertions that there was no evidence of human transmissibility without actually examining those claims. By making themselves an amplifier for Chinese propaganda, they compromised their reputation for integrity. Therefore I trust neither of them blindly.
The CDC is saying there's no evidence, which is false. The evidence is only circumstantial, and that is not the same thing as hard evidence, but it is also not the same as no evidence. Trump's stooge is saying it's his personal opini [politico.com]
Typical politicization of Teh Science (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course the press has to politicize this and make it into a "narrative" of some kind. Meanwhile, people who actually know what they're doing are waiting until the facts have been examined:
I ask you, if someone claims that there's "no evidence" of something before a study is even done about it, then what ought that to tell you about that person?
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I ask you, if someone claims that there's "no evidence" of something before a study is even done about it
Err, there has been studies done. Lots of them. In the virology world analysis of SARS-CoV-2 and it's origins have been the singular thing the entire virology and epidemiology fields have been focused on.
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Of course the press has to politicize this and make it into a "narrative" of some kind. Meanwhile, people who actually know what they're doing are waiting until the facts have been examined:
I ask you, if someone claims that there's "no evidence" of something before a study is even done about it, then what ought that to tell you about that person?
No studies have been made? GTFO.
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I ask you, if someone claims that there's "no evidence" of something before a study is even done about it, then what ought that to tell you about that person?
That person you cited literally just said there's "no evidence".
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Of course the press has to politicize this and make it into a "narrative" of some kind
Of course you blame the press. Blaming the Trump Administration for what they clearly did is a step too far.
I ask you, if someone claims that there's "no evidence" of something before a study is even done about it, then what ought that to tell you about that person?
Hold a sec. The Trump Administration pushed this notion that CoVID-19 was made in a lab with almost no evidence, but you are not focusing on those allegations. Instead you are trying to paint that it is "politicization" by the press for pointing out the lack of evidence.
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The politicization is that the people trying to shut this hypothesis down because there is "no evidence" are instead pushing an alternative hypothesis with equal amounts of "no evidence".
The crossover-from-wildlife hypothesis is essentially appeals to authority and arguments from ignorance. That hypothesis assigns zero weight to the fact that the WIV is the closest known place to have the closest known wild relative of SARS-CoV-2 (RaTG13), and zero weight to the behavior of the Chinese government, but almo
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I ask you, if someone claims that there's "no evidence" of something before a study is even done about it, then what ought that to tell you about that person?
??? "before a study is done" is literally the ONLY time when there's no evidence about something.
He 'feels' the evidence (Score:3, Insightful)
It's alternate evidence.
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Unsurprising (Score:5, Insightful)
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Bats are not known to live around the city of Wuhan, and the closest wild relative to SARS-CoV-2 was found hundreds of kilometers away, near China's southern border.
How would anyone ever travel hundreds of kilometers? Horses just don't go that far do they?
Though it seems strange that 50k people have died from it in California [worldometers.info] if it can't travel very far.
And California is 10,000 kilometers away from China. [google.com]
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Is your theory is that someone went to a fairly remote cave in Yunnan, caught the virus from bats there, traveled to Wuhan, and only started infecting other people after arriving in Wuhan?
If only there were some way to substantiate this kind of theory. For example, if the Chinese government would let independent scientists see the actual records of early cases. But they did not [nytimes.com], instead pressuring the WHO investigators to simply echo what the CCP said. That suggests some kind of remaining cover-up by the
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Because we already know that is false.
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No, I don't think the very first infected person caught it at the Huanan wet market in Wuhan, but that may have been the first "mass spreader" event.
I ask again: Is your theory that someone caught it near the closest known wild relative, quite far from Wuhan, and then did not transmit it until they traveled to the city of Wuhan? Why did you invoke people traveling, if not to suggest than an infected person brought it to Wuhan?
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Re:Unsurprising (Score:5, Informative)
They aren't?
Here's a study about Leptospira in bats from Hubei province [nih.gov].
Here's another study [asm.org] from 14 years ago about SARS in bats, including bats from Hubei.
Here's the range of the Chinese rufous horseshoe bat [wikipedia.org], note it includes Hubei province.
Re:Unsurprising (Score:5, Insightful)
Bats are not known to live around the city of Wuhan
I find this claim highly dubious. Bats live fucking everywhere.
and the closest wild relative to SARS-CoV-2 was found hundreds of kilometers away, near China's southern border.
So? The closest wild relative to SARS-CoV-1 was located in Yunnan, *thousands* of kilometers from Guangdong, where the outbreak originated.
This is because while bats are the reservoir for SARS-CoV like viruses, it requires some kind of interspecies jump or recombination to become virulent in humans.
The core argument in favor of crossover from wildlife is that scientists don't think many of the mutations in the virus's genome make sense as engineered changes. That is a straight-up argument from ignorance
No, it is not. An argument from ignorance would be claiming that "we don't see evidence that the changes were engineered, therefor they are not."
They are claiming that the evidence suggests the changes are natural. Evidence to the contrary is not the same thing as a lack of evidence.
You're misconstruing their argument.
not to mention that it presumes that any man-made changes would be intentional
There is a mountain of evidence that SARS-CoV viruses can jump from their bat reservoirs to various other mammals, and then on to humans.
Literally every single SARS-CoV variants was "man-made" in that we provided the opportunity for the viruses to recombine.
and should not get anywhere near the amount of credence that it has gotten. It only does because lots of people accept an argument from authority.
Accepting the word of someone is not accepting an argument from authority.
The "wildlife crossover" argument relies on logical fallacies.
I wish I could say your argument relied on logical fallacies, but it does not. It relies on outright falsehoods.
Shame on you, shithead.
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I don't have the patience to deal with all your bullshit, but let me address this. This paper [nature.com] was cited earlier in the thread, and it's a good example of the genre. Why do they dismiss the lab origin theory?
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That is a straight-up argument from ignorance, not to mention that it presumes that any man-made changes would be intentional, and should not get anywhere near the amount of credence that it has gotten.
What??? Here I’ve been relishing in the new vaccine technology, those chips they implant are out of this world - suck it AMD! Now you tell me that bioengineers can just craft flawless new zero day flaws into an operating system with millions of years of patches?!? When will modern wonders ever cease?
This is not the evidence you are looking for (Score:2)
Move along...
This is just begging for the title... (Score:2)
Science trump's politics, who would have thought it.
Not what he said (Score:2, Informative)
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If you watch the actual interview, he suggested that it did likely start in bats local to Wuhan, but was probably being studied, etc at the lab... He never stated that it was artificial/man made, just that the natural virus was probably poorly handled at the lab and that is how it spread.
This is a possibility, and as you pointed out, it is quite different from the "created in the lab" narrative (one pushed by too many people watching B-level sci-fi movies pretending to be virologists.)
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It doesn't take much of a conspiracy theory to posit that bats were being studied in the lab for new viruses, and that some underpaid worker removed carcasses from the lab to sell in the wet market
It doesn't take much of a conspiracy theory, but the problem with that particular idea is that the Chinese like to buy their animals live and kill them at home because that is the only way to know the meat is fresh. Frankly this is the only way to know that in any country, but China has extremely limp consumer protection laws so it's exceptionally true there.
However, before someone asserts racism or some other kind of prejudice let me just say that it's still true in e.g. the USA, where lots of tricks are u
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There's little reason to think SARS-CoV is different, being that all known wild SARS-CoV variants are non-virulent in humans.
The lab hypothesis therefor holds less water than the hypothesis that animals mingled in close quarters with precisely *zero* biological safety protocols (i.e., markets)
While there is little evidence of which it is, one is overwhelmingly more likely than the other. A scientist would know this.
Stupid bickering don't help much.. (Score:2)
This was bound to happen in a way or another, and we weren't ready for it.
Could be the chinese thing, the indian, the brazilian, the american..
Same end result, same panic, same bad decisions...
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Serious Question-does anyone know right off what a (Score:2)
I did a very quick google search and turned up little. One thing I did turn up was cdc guidance that animals are currently playing little to no role in covid spread.
Iâ(TM)m wondering what animals at the market were carriers and what animals are carriers now?
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Re: Serious Question-does anyone know right off wh (Score:2)
Thanks for the reply. Iâ(TM)ve dug a little deeper since I posted. While i confirmed your list, I discovered that there is still insufficient evidence to identify the particular species that initially transmitted the virus to humans.
Nor have I found information about what animals at the market were actually infected.
Why speculate when there's pretty much and answer (Score:3)
''All three approaches to removal of recombinant genomic segments point to a single ancestral lineage for SARS-CoV-2 and RaTG13. Two other bat viruses (CoVZXC21 and CoVZC45) from Zhejiang Province fall on this lineage as recombinants of the RaTG13/SARS-CoV-2 lineage and the clade of Hong Kong bat viruses sampled between 2005 and 2007 (Fig. 1c). Specifically, progenitors of the RaTG13/SARS-CoV-2 lineage appear to have recombined with the Hong Kong clade (with inferred breakpoints at 11.9 and 20.8âkb) to form the CoVZXC21/CoVZC45-lineage. Sibling lineages to RaTG13/SARS-CoV-2 include a pangolin sequence sampled in Guangdong Province in March 2019 and a clade of pangolin sequences from Guangxi Province sampled in 2017.''
https://www.nature.com/article... [nature.com]
There is one piece of evidence (Score:3)
There is one piece of evidence that it may have come from a lab: its high transmissibility among humans.
From the MIT Technology Review article on the subject [technologyreview.com]: "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."
My question: what does he mean "more tightly"? Are we talking a high femto-newton value for virus binding? What is this value and what are the values for colds, flus, SARS-1, MERS, etc?
Redfield himself says the same sort of thing [reuters.com]: "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”
That's it - that's the reason for the suspicion. Further investigations will be needed to figure it out.
Re: Facts... (Score:2)
Umm, no. Any more than covering up a suppression of a minority proves the moon is a holographic projection. One cover up does not prove another.
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carried out exactly such a cover-up
We know that they carried out a virus-escaped-out-of-a-lab cover-up? How?
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Did Dr. Li claim the virus came from a bat that flew from Yunnan province to the Wuhan wet market associated with an early outbreak of the disease?
If you have a point, please make it. If you are simply a pro-China troll, carry on as you have.
Re: Facts... (Score:5, Insightful)
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But we do know they definitely tried to hide the situation
How do you figure?
I recall they definitely tried to minimize what they were going through and hide the fact that they were welding people into their fucking homes to stop the spread. I don't recall any reports of some kind of attempt at hiding the source.
Any evidence with timelines to go with your claim?
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But we do know they definitely tried to hide the situation
How do you figure?
Well, I figure you're a fucking idiot [washingtonpost.com].
I don't recall any reports of some kind of attempt at hiding the source.
That's not what I said. But if they were trying to hide the source, then delaying the release of information is absolutely what they would do. And in fact, it's what they did. China's actions absolutely, totally, and 100% match what you would do if you were trying to hide the source. They are also explainable in some other ways, but the simple fact that China hid the outbreak for as long as was feasible is uncontested and incontrovertible.
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I think you went off half-cocked there. Is that a common problem for you?
No, I've got a whole cock.
They did not try to hide that there *was* an outbreak.
They tried to hide the risk of pandemic. And they have done basically everything you would do if you were trying to hide the origin as well.
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I think the only thing we learned here is that you don't have a very accurate understanding of the words you use.
I think the thing we learned here is that you report disingenuously on both facts, and word choices made due to poetic license. Wait, no. We knew the first part already.
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Proving that the virus has none of the hallmarks of manipulation does NOT prove that the virus did not escape from a lab. It only proves it was not altered first (if that).
Also, I expect better from you than this.
It hasn't been proven that you don't dress up in your murder victim's skin on the weekends either.
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Your expectations are orthogonal to the situation.
The point isn't that it definitely came from a lab, the point is that the theory that it came from a lab is eminently reasonable and hasn't been proven or disproven.
But a lot of people are acting like it's been disproven, including a lot of scientists, and that's just as bullshit as acting like it's a known fact. Neither thing is true. Each thing is equally untrue, in fact.
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The point isn't that it definitely came from a lab, the point is that the theory that it came from a lab is eminently reasonable and hasn't been proven or disproven.
Whether or not the theory is reasonable is a matter of opinion.
There's no reason to think it *did* come from a lab other than your own personal prejudices.
There's plenty of evidence that SARS-CoV can become virulent to humans from some bat reservoir via an intermediary.
SARS-CoV-1 crossed thousands of kilometers from reservoir to outbreak with at least one recombination event after jumping to civets.
No lab is required.
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There's no reason to think it *did* come from a lab other than your own personal prejudices.
There's a lab conveniently located nearby to the supposed epicenter, and that lab has known safety issues [voanews.com]. That's a good reason to believe that it could have come from a lab.
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More specifically, we know Chinese authorities at the local (city or province) level carried out exactly such a cover-up; it made international news, and the central government punished people over it.
The real question is whether that was a modified limited hangout, and the central government's more competent cleaners just took over the cover-up.
That is a pretty serious and extraordinary claim so let's see your extraordinary evidence. Who is 'we' and where can we peruse your evidence? ... and Nota Bene: Q-drops don't count.
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My evidence is so extraordinary [slashdot.org] that it was only covered repeatedly in all the major news media over the past 13 months.
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My evidence is so extraordinary [slashdot.org] that it was only covered repeatedly in all the major news media over the past 13 months.
Your evidence so far is your own slashdot post?? :
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My evidence is my "own slashdot post". I pointed you to where I already provided evidence for someone else who lived under a rock and paid zero attention to international news over the last year.
I didn't say that there was proof of a lab escape cover-up. I said there was proof of a cover-up relating to Covid-19 by the people who supposedly did not cover up a lab origin for the virus. The argument against the lab origin theory is that we have no evidence in support of it -- except that the Chinese governm
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Typo correction: My evidence is not my "own slashdot post".
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Typo correction: My evidence is not my "own slashdot post".
Still waiting for your irrefutable proof. It promises to be international headline news If you can cough up something better in the way of proof than your own Slashdot post containing three links to articles that don’t prove China cooked up COVID in a lab and let it loose on humanity.
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Where is your irrefutable proof of a wildlife source?
That's right -- you don't have any. You only have double standards.
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We all know they tried to hide just how draconian they were being about stopping the spread. They tried to hide how bad it was. These are pretty standard save-face routines for the soviet-style commies.
As for them ordering samples destroyed? That's hardly evidence of malfeasance. The US would have done the same thing if an unauthorized lab got its hand on something that was deemed BSL 4.
You've got an agenda.
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Who is the fuckwad with an agenda -- the person who cites evidence, or the person who claims that samples of a live and rapidly spreading outbreak should be "deemed BSL 4"?
Wuhan's "draconian" measures to stop the spread of the disease included having huge public feasts days after they knew the disease was human-to-human transmissible, and announcing travel restrictions well before imposing them, causing a mad rush of people to leave the city. The most important thing they hid then was the human-to-human tr
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We all know they tried to hide just how draconian they were being about stopping the spread. They tried to hide how bad it was. These are pretty standard save-face routines for the soviet-style commies.
As for them ordering samples destroyed? That's hardly evidence of malfeasance. The US would have done the same thing if an unauthorized lab got its hand on something that was deemed BSL 4.
You've got an agenda.
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>"More specifically, we know Chinese authorities at the local (city or province) level carried out exactly such a cover-up; it made international news, and the central government punished people over it."
Just to clarify, the central gov punished people over the FAILURE of the cover-up. And the central gov then participated in more cover-up. This doesn't add evidence to or against it being naturally released or released from a lab; naturally made, or man-made. But what China did was horrific.
And then t
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But fortunately, their word isn't necessary.
We've extensively studies coronaviruses, and the very first outbreak we know if traveled from Yunnan to Guangdong before turning into a disease that was virulent to humans (via civets)
I.e., occam's razor says the lab is the less likely explanation. The status quo will continue to produce coronaviruses, which is why pandemic experts have been warning us since the first decade of the 21st century to