Early Virus Sequences 'Mysteriously' Deleted Have Been Not-So-Mysteriously Undeleted (nytimes.com) 128
"A batch of early coronavirus data that went missing for a year has emerged from hiding," reports the New York Times. (Jesse Bloom, a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, had found copies of 13 of the deleted sequences on Google Cloud.)
Though their deletion raised some suspicions, "An odd explanation has emerged, stemming from an editorial oversight by a scientific journal," reports the Times. "And the sequences have been uploaded into a different database, overseen by the Chinese government."
The Times also notes that the researchers had already posted their early findings online in March 2020: That month, they also uploaded the sequences to an online database called the Sequence Read Archive, which is maintained by the National Institutes of Health, and submitted a paper describing their results to a scientific journal called Small. The paper was published in June 2020... [A] spokeswoman for the N.I.H. said that the authors of the study had requested in June 2020 that the sequences be withdrawn from the database. The authors informed the agency that the sequences were being updated and would be added to a different database... On July 5, more than a year after the researchers withdrew the sequences from the Sequence Read Archive and two weeks after Dr. Bloom's report was published online, the sequences were quietly uploaded to a database maintained by China National Center for Bioinformation by Ben Hu, a researcher at Wuhan University and a co-author of the Small paper.
On July 21, the disappearance of the sequences was brought up during a news conference in Beijing... According to a translation of the news conference by a journalist at the state-controlled Xinhua News Agency, the vice minister of China's National Health Commission, Dr. Zeng Yixin, said that the trouble arose when editors at Small deleted a paragraph in which the scientists described the sequences in the Sequence Read Archive. "Therefore, the researchers thought it was no longer necessary to store the data in the N.C.B.I. database," Dr. Zeng said, referring to the Sequence Read Archive, which is run by the N.I.H.
An editor at Small, which specializes in science at the micro and nano scale and is based in Germany, confirmed his account. "The data availability statement was mistakenly deleted," the editor, Plamena Dogandzhiyski, wrote in an email. "We will issue a correction very shortly, which will clarify the error and include a link to the depository where the data is now hosted." The journal posted a formal correction to that effect on Thursday.
While the researchers' first report had described their sequences as coming from patients "early in the epidemic," thus provoking intense curiosity, the sequences were, as promised, updated, to include a more specific date after they were published in the database, according to the Times. "They were taken from Renmin Hospital of Wuhan University on January 30 — almost two months after the earliest reports of Covid-19 in China."
Though their deletion raised some suspicions, "An odd explanation has emerged, stemming from an editorial oversight by a scientific journal," reports the Times. "And the sequences have been uploaded into a different database, overseen by the Chinese government."
The Times also notes that the researchers had already posted their early findings online in March 2020: That month, they also uploaded the sequences to an online database called the Sequence Read Archive, which is maintained by the National Institutes of Health, and submitted a paper describing their results to a scientific journal called Small. The paper was published in June 2020... [A] spokeswoman for the N.I.H. said that the authors of the study had requested in June 2020 that the sequences be withdrawn from the database. The authors informed the agency that the sequences were being updated and would be added to a different database... On July 5, more than a year after the researchers withdrew the sequences from the Sequence Read Archive and two weeks after Dr. Bloom's report was published online, the sequences were quietly uploaded to a database maintained by China National Center for Bioinformation by Ben Hu, a researcher at Wuhan University and a co-author of the Small paper.
On July 21, the disappearance of the sequences was brought up during a news conference in Beijing... According to a translation of the news conference by a journalist at the state-controlled Xinhua News Agency, the vice minister of China's National Health Commission, Dr. Zeng Yixin, said that the trouble arose when editors at Small deleted a paragraph in which the scientists described the sequences in the Sequence Read Archive. "Therefore, the researchers thought it was no longer necessary to store the data in the N.C.B.I. database," Dr. Zeng said, referring to the Sequence Read Archive, which is run by the N.I.H.
An editor at Small, which specializes in science at the micro and nano scale and is based in Germany, confirmed his account. "The data availability statement was mistakenly deleted," the editor, Plamena Dogandzhiyski, wrote in an email. "We will issue a correction very shortly, which will clarify the error and include a link to the depository where the data is now hosted." The journal posted a formal correction to that effect on Thursday.
While the researchers' first report had described their sequences as coming from patients "early in the epidemic," thus provoking intense curiosity, the sequences were, as promised, updated, to include a more specific date after they were published in the database, according to the Times. "They were taken from Renmin Hospital of Wuhan University on January 30 — almost two months after the earliest reports of Covid-19 in China."
Re:Where are the early Covid-19 sequences? (Score:5, Informative)
The Chinese posted a full genetic sequence for the virus in early January, which was welcomed by the scientific community.
https://www.sciencemag.org/new... [sciencemag.org]
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And right after the genome was released, the lab that released it was closed by the government for rectification. [scmp.com] This is not a grand conspiracy, it's an overbearing bureaucracy.
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Something doesn't add up here. They say that the lab released the data on the 11th but by that point it had already been published by the Wuhan lab on the 6th. Maybe the issue was public release rather than submitting it to the WHO, although the WHO immediately published it anyway and scientists around the world were analysing it days before the 11th.
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You might be confused, but there are plenty of articles that talk about the lab being closed by the government for rectification, so if you want a different article, search for your own. Don't argue against that point.
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I didn't argue against that point, I was just trying to get a clear picture of what happened. I wouldn't doubt it when the SCMP says that the Chinese government retaliated for unauthorized release of the information.
Re:Where are the early Covid-19 sequences? (Score:5, Informative)
so if you want a different article, search for your own. Don't argue against that point.
i'm afraid you don't get to decide what point people may want to argue, and that point is actually very disputable because: no, there aren't many articles covering that particular news and, all 3 instances if found on a cursory exploration are literal copypaste of the same source which actually cites no real source, just a rumor.
not saying it isn't true, not saying there is a conspiracy either, not denying that china might very well have withheld information (nothing really unusual in these events) but i feel it's also worth nothing that none of the rumors which have been floated around (which were plenty from day one) has been substantiated, and that the data was actually shared with the community at large since very early.
and yes, that article could be perfectly bs.
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there aren't many articles covering that particular news
Yes there are lol, you're bad at searching.
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dismissive sarcasm may get you a cookie but doesn't add really any credibility to the article in question.
no tragedy because even if true, it would be hardly relevant information. a lab allegedly closed, not specified by whom, not specified why, not specified for how long, not specified what "closed" actually means. source: hearsay.
i mean ... try harder, phantom :)
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You could include a search string in your response, or even a list of some websites the search finds.
Pre-Covid Genome data was removed (Score:4, Insightful)
The Wuhan Institute of Virology was a reputable research lab and published many genomes about the viruses they were studying. However, there is little doubt that they deleted some of their published sequences in early 2020 (e.g. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov])
One hypothesis is that this was because they contain a precursor to SARS-COV-2 that is closer than the RaTG13 that they did publish some time after the pandemic.
Neither I nor anyone here knows whether SARS-COV-2 was a lab leak or not. But I am concerned at the cancel culture surrounding any discussion of it. This post will probably marked as a troll. There are several well written papers providing considerable evidence for the hypothesis, but none have been published properly. On the other hand, there are no reputable papers that properly refute any of the allegations. For me, the simple fact that the virus arose suddenly near the world's leading bat coronavirus research labs, a thousand miles from any bats, means that the hypothesis is worthy of thorough investigation.
The reason this important is that we do not want it to ever happen again.
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It's gonna happen again because occam's razor points to the issue being habitat destruction which no one in these discussions brings up. The way humanity is treating Earth is literally making it violent against us. This is the conclusion of the Gaia hypothesis understood relative to humanities impact on Earth. So the whole thing is a distraction, to get us to talk about safety of biolabs when the reality is we have fucked up Earth and these kinds of viruses will continue to hope species as they are displace
Re: Pre-Covid Genome data was removed (Score:1, Insightful)
The Gaia hypothesis is pseudoscientific at best and believed by religious groups.
Yes, I know the MSM and China want you to believe that is the cause of the COVID pandemic, and I know many politicians have brought up this hypothesis, but seriously, Mother Earth is not a deity that can be mad at us for doing anything.
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But I am concerned at the cancel culture surrounding any discussion of it. This post will probably marked as a troll.
lol, "cancel culture"!! you guys have been floating these accusations here daily since the pandemic started, non-stop!!
There are several well written papers providing considerable evidence for the hypothesis, but none have been published properly.
yes, there is considerable evidence except that considerable evidence goes nowhere.
On the other hand, there are no reputable papers that properly refute any of the allegations.
because it is impossible to refute nonsense allegations pulled out from someone's ass. there's nothing to refute.
For me, the simple fact that the virus arose suddenly near the world's leading bat coronavirus research labs, a thousand miles from any bats, means that the hypothesis is worthy of thorough investigation.
sigh .... then just do your investigation and come back once you have something more than your blind belief. these wild accusations just make you look conspiranoid.,
the reason this important is that we do not want it to ever happen again.
what exactly should not happen a
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> yes, there is considerable evidence except that considerable evidence goes nowhere.
Did you actually read the paper? This one is quite clear, sober, and semi technical.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
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www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov’s DNS address could not be found.
damn chinese! :D
Re:Pre-Covid Genome data was removed (Score:4, Interesting)
The paper is interestingly hostile toward the current consensus that a natural origin is still more likely, as they are well documented to have happened in the past, and all the risk factors for that happening have only increased over time.
I detected more than a little bias in the paper, so I decided to google one of the authors at random. I ran into his twitter account.
It is perhaps fallacious to judge his paper from the drivel conspiracy theories he splats all over his public postings, but being I'm no virologist or genetic engineer, and am thus not a reliable check on his work, I'm going to anyway.
That guy wrote that paper with the intent of supporting a conclusion. The scientific method didn't factor in here at all. Just a well educated person backing up his conspiracy theory.
I'll note that this doesn't say anything about whether he's right or wrong.
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This is unfortunately just a paper by a US government organisation that wants to paint China as the next enemy.
Actually no evidence at all in it.
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I was surprised enough by the lack of rigor and apparent bias, as well as open attempts at supporting a conclusion instead of letting the data talk for itself that I decided to research one of the authors.
This dude shouldn't be in science.
At the very least, he should be given a serious talk-to by whatever University that employs him for the poor scientific discipline demonstrated in the paper.
So what does he say that is wrong? (Score:2)
If we step back from personal attacks against the author, it would be interesting to know if there are any specific arguments the he made that you disagree with. Very interesting. Because unless he is lying about everything, then he makes some good points, regardless of what garbage he might say on Twitter.
I think they are pushing back against dubious but widely publicized papers (like Anderson's) that stated that the virus could not have escaped from a lab. Clearly, it could have. Remember that the pa
Decent review (Score:2)
All I ever see is people saying "it's bad", "bias", "I don't like it"...
I never see anyone producing reasoned counter arguments to the points that the paper raises.
Certainly the paper makes a point that you may emotionally disagree with. But it would be interesting to know if you had any real reasons to disagree with even one of the points that they make.
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If we step back from personal attacks against the author,
That isn't a personal attack. It's a concern about the motivations of the author.
If you think that the words of a person exists outside of his motivations, you must be easy to manipulate indeed.
it would be interesting to know if there are any specific arguments the he made that you disagree with.
There aren't.
His argument is well-reasoned. I'm no more convinced that it is right, but it's valid.
The problem is that his paper is a re-hashing of circumstantial evidence published by other people. There's no science there. The goal of the paper is to attack a viewpoint, not to further science.
Very interesting. Because unless he is lying about everything, then he makes some good points, regardless of what garbage he might say on Twitter.
I didn't say he did
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All I ever see is people saying "it's bad", "bias", "I don't like it"...
That's because the paper really is bad, and full of non-addressed bias. That's not how scientific literature is supposed to work.
I never see anyone producing reasoned counter arguments to the points that the paper raises.
Why would they? The above being true does not say his argument is invalid. It means he's not interested in coming to the truth, he's interested in seeing his preconceived notion be proven true.
Certainly the paper makes a point that you may emotionally disagree with. But it would be interesting to know if you had any real reasons to disagree with even one of the points that they make.
I don't emotionally disagree with the point he makes, I emotionally disagree with the hit piece being dressed up as a scientific paper.
Fortunately, real scientists that have more integrity
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> The lab-leak hypothesis relies primarily on the assumption that the Chinese are bad guys- which..
Not at all. That they were doing the same sort of research that other labs were doing, and were a little bit sloppy with their hygiene.
I do not think that Segreto claims the novelty required to make a scientific paper, rather it is a survey paper that succinctly gathers the evidence collected by many different people, as stated in the acknowledgements, which is a perfectly valid thing to do.
But what is cle
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QED
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There is no reason to be sure that it did not come from that lab.
White House living quarters (Score:2)
The missing RNA sequences "turned up" in the residential portion of the White House?
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January 5 -- Fudan University team completes the sequencing of the virus, and Dr. Zhang Yongzen uploads the sequence to the Unites States NIH NCBI genbank database to share with international collaborators.
January 10 -- One of Dr. Zhang's international collaborator's, Dr. Edward Holmes of the University of Sydney, asks Dr. Zhang for permission to make a link to the genbank record [nih.gov] public, and Dr. Zhang agrees. Dr. Holmes publishes a notification [virological.org] on virological.org.
January 11 -- News of the genome publicatio
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But the Wuhan lab released the data to the WHO on the 6th. That's the bit that doesn't quite tie in.
In any case I'm not questioning what happened at this lab, I'm just saying my original point that the data was available from the 6th, provided by the Chinese government, is accurate. Maybe they were upset about the other lab publishing it independently, but it wasn't withheld.
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As I said, I think the triggering thing was the public nature of the revelation that triggered the retaliation. As long as the data was being shared between researchers and bureaucrats that wasn't perceived as threatening.
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Being sneaky is not the same as probable guilt of manufacturing the virus. Despots are sneaky out of habit.
Re:Where are the early Covid-19 sequences? (Score:4, Insightful)
Donâ(TM)t ascribe to malice what can be plainly explained by incompetence. (Hanlon's razor)
I'm no Chinese government apologist but it really doesn't make sense that this is an engineered virus - if it were, it would be much more deadly and contagious - especially since there have been other recent bird flu viruses that were much more deadly that could have been used.
Someone may have deleted the sequences from the database as a bureaucratic ass-covering reflex but I don't think it would have been done this way to hide nefarious or malicious research activity - the sequence neve would have been posted in the database in the first place if it were.
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Donâ(TM)t ascribe to malice what can be plainly explained by incompetence. (Hanlon's razor)
Well, that's like Rule 1. Rule 0 is don't make up wild conspiracy theories about shit you don't know anything about.
These are lab tech doing their normal lab tech jobs getting slammed with a crazy pandemic and a volume of samples and tests they probably aren't used to. Them trying to just do their job amidst the COVID interruptions should resonate with all of us, because we all struggled to keep shit going correctly under COVID. I'm not surprised they ran into issues - we all did! I'm not surprised that the
They hyptotheis deserves to be investigated (Score:2)
Neither I nor anyone here knows whether SARS-COV-2 was a lab leak or not. But I am concerned at the cancel culture surrounding any discussion of it. This post will probably marked as a troll.
There are several well written papers providing considerable evidence for the hypothesis, but none have been published properly. On the other hand, there are no reputable papers that properly refute any of the allegations. For me, the simple fact that the virus arose suddenly near the world's leading bat coronavirus res
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Neither I nor anyone here knows whether SARS-COV-2 was a lab leak or not.
Then shut the fuck up about it and get on with life!
Instead you just go and dive right into the fucking conspiracy theories, and demonstrate deep knowledge of it because you're spending your time reading them and spreading them! Just let them go.
Stop.
Go do something productive rather than being one of the million internet Keystone Cops who are completely unqualified to investigate this, don't have any authority, don't have any tools, don't have any inside knowledge, don't have any of the necessary backgroun
Inappropriate language for Slashdot (Score:2)
Or anywhere else.
This type of aggression convinces nobody of anything. It just demonstrates your own frustrations with life.
Reasoned arguments are welcome. But this type of drivel is counter productive.
Please go and find some other forum to vent your anger in. Or have you already been banned from them?
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There is one main paper (Anderson) that says there is no direct evidence of gene splicing using old techniques. However, new technologies leave no trace, so a lack of such evidence is meaningless. And GoF could also be done through Serial Passage, which would not leave any evidence.
If you actually want to know what the evidence is this is a good published paper.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
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Rossana Segreto's bias and preconception is well documented.
Him writing a paper with the explicit attempt at shoring up his preconception is not a good paper. It's a shit paper.
If he had good evidence, it would have spoken for itself instead of 50% of the paper being arguments for a hypothesis that is only weakly supported.
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I do not care about Segreto's motivations. Unlike you I care about what he says. And I follow up his references.
There are a few grey areas, but unlike your post Segreto makes a reasoned argument rather than just vacuous accusations.
Read the paper. He has good evidence.
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I do not care about Segreto's motivations.
You should, because that is exactly how you detect bias.
Unlike you I care about what he says.
OK, this is just idiotic.
Obviously I care about what he says. And what the true intentions of his words are.
And I follow up his references.
So did I. They were shit. Re-hashing of the same "rare codon" hypothesis.
Which is a valid hypothesis, but it isn't his.
There are a few grey areas, but unlike your post Segreto makes a reasoned argument rather than just vacuous accusations.
He does make a reasoned argument.
I never said otherwise.
However, my accusations aren't vacuous. They're well supported
I.e., I have made a reasoned argument that his reasoned argument comes with the intent to try to manipulat
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Well, so what is one issue that you disagree with?
E.g. Did the WIV engage in GoF research into Bat Coronaviruses? I would have thought that their published papers make that point pretty clear, but if you disagree then why? Technically? Not just that you disagree because you disagree.
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Wait a minute. I haven't read every post in this thread, but nowhere in the post you're replying to does the word "engineer" (in any of its forms). The question that AC seems to have been asking is different: what's the evidence that it didn't escape from the lab? Escape from the Wuhan lab could well have happened even if the virus was not engineered.
All too often Chinese apologists twist the escape question into an engineering question by replying that all the evidence indicates that the virus was not "
New conspiracy theories are on the way. (Score:2)
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Conspiracies are always the best explanation.
Re: New conspiracy theories are on the way. (Score:2)
Sir, we are "they".
Re:New conspiracy theories are on the way. (Score:5, Funny)
It is absurdly obvious that, by early November 2020, COVID-19 had mutated enough that it was able infect thousands of American voting machcines (transmitted by undocumented maskless child sex slaves doing forced labor in election centers under orders of the Democrats, in all likelihood) - altering the results of the election and throwing it to Joe Biden.
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Damn, I hope Fox News doesn't read this site or you have just given them a week of breathless headlines.
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But fortunately, he's not like his former opponent, and does what he does in some weird archaic form of parental concern rather than fantasizing about fucking them once he won't get thrown in jail for it. Wait- for his former opponent, that was his idea of parental concern. Shit.
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It's a communist government: memory holes and government coverup are where analysis starts
It's pretty obvious the China is manipulating data (Score:3)
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You'd think the place first hit badly when we didn't understand the virus or have any treatments would have fairly bad numbers.
It's very unusual and suspicious that you didn't consider that without it being spoon fed to you...
You stupid on purpose? Or just think other people are that stupid?
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No idiot, if you actually read the Seattle Times original article about the sequences you would actually realize that the "deleted" sequences, as if someone was trying to make them go "poof". Robert Garry states the "deleted" key data from the China study, a list of mutations seen in the virus sequences, has remained available to researchers in an appendix. He said Bloom found the same mutations. “Jesse Bloom found exactly nothing new that is not already part of the scientific literature,” Gar
CCP Culpability Is Not Just About Lab Leaks (Score:3, Insightful)
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Meanwhile they sent infected workers to CCP owned factories in Italy.
Also, hospital occupancy shows severe epidemic levels in Wuhan by the second week of October, the start was sometime in Sept. (or earlier) with incubation and spreading time
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Re: CCP Culpability Is Not Just About Lab Leaks (Score:4, Insightful)
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IIRC, the first victims were countries like Italy and Iran.
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If it was local to Wuhan then it only makes sense to shut down internal flights to that area.
Anyway it's not like many other countries didn't keep international flights running, long after it was obvious that they needed to stop. The UK is currently experiencing a wave that is due to not closing the border with India when we should have.
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When Trump sensibly explored quarantining them in Gitmo where the court system could not interfere the libtards in the bureacracy threw a fit and let the virus spread.
I... don't really know how to parse this.
You're arguing for the President to have the power to hold US citizens without their constitutional rights?
Posse Comitatus?
And in what universe can the Courts not touch them?
The US Military is a lawful organization, created by law, and even the Uniform Code of Military Justice is passed by Congress. Court jurisdiction with regard to the military is thus determined by Congress, and their determination is quite clear: Non-US military, even if under military jurisd
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The virus doesnt care about your childish rant.
There's nothing childish about concern over the ideas of a fascist.
Quarantine works and the constitution fully supports t.
Quarantine via the rule of law is one thing. What you propose is executive-imposed military quarantine.
That is not supported by the constitution even a little bit
The problem is pansy ass lawyers will still try to take it to court and get temporary stays..
Yes, well, that's what we have the 6th for, right?
Pesky rule of law getting in the way? Take out the legislators!
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There is a reason that all Habeas Corpus doctrines have exceptions built in for Quarantine.
Not in the US, they don't.
Only in cases of rebellion or invasion.
In any other case, you have access to the a court.
The right to a writ of habeas corpus does not mean you can't be lawfully detained, as you would be in a quarantine.
It simply means you have access to court oversight.
You are again wrong, and in a dangerous way.
If you let someone be out of quarantine while you debate in court the quarantine is already broken no matter if the court later decides quarantine was justified (its meaningless at that point).
Whether or not they should be let out while the court is deciding their fate is up to the court. Whether your logic is right or wrong, you are factually incorrect as to whether or no
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The US is not a Parliamentary system.
Not relevant.
The legislative branch is not supposed to have day to day control.
Not relevant.
The President is elected so he gets his authority directly from the people.
The President is as elected as the legislature.
He gets his authority from 2 places.
The Constitution, and the Congress.
His right to exercise that authority comes from the people.
The legislative branch's job ends at determining what the govt goals are by passing laws.
You couldn't be more wrong.
The Power of the Executive branch comes from the Constitution. Alone, the Constitution doesn't allow for a hell of a lot.
For the rest, it comes from laws passed by Congress.
It is now perhaps time for you to learn why it's called the Executive branch.
That's because it execute
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China has about 235 airports. 38 of those deal with international flights, and only one of them is anywhere near Wuhan. Do you understand the significance of this, or do I have to spell it out like I would to a Grade 3?
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Actually you could spell out the significancy of your rant.
As I for my part have no clue what your point is.
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I note that the international agreement at the UN brokered by the United States over epidemic outbreaks is that no shutdown of international flights should be done automatically but that a country may shut them down after notifying the UN and stating a reason. The US did not shut down the flights. Can you imagine the press if Trump had abandoned American citizens in China and refused to allow them to fly home? The fact that he did not quarantine them when they got back is one of the reasons half a million
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It doesn't matter whether or not there was a lab leak. When the outbreak started, the CCP shut down domestic flights, but not international flights. That in itself shows that they decided to take it seriously for their own citizenry but not to try and protect the rest of the world.
I would take it further. Shutting down domestic flights will delay the spread of the virus domestically, while maintaining international flights will accelerate the spread of the virus outside of China.
If you knew the virus would be devastating and it was too late to contain it domestically, why not accelerate its spread to foreign nations for maximum damage?
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It shows nothing except that the U.S. is a big country with a lot of moving parts and without an autocratic central government.
Australia (and NZ) stopped it (Score:2)
Total elimination within a few months. (Then an ongoing set of annoying leaks from quarantine)
What matters is not that Chine done it, but that a Virologist may have done it. If it was indeed an accidental lab leak then that reflects upon the entire international community of virologists and the work that they do. They would require much, much more scrutiny to make sure it never happens again.
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Given that we are moving from the century of microelectronics to the century of microbiology it would hardly surprise me if you stupid Americans shut down your own research capability and left it to the Chinese to rule the century. If I was a Chinese propaganda source I would say exactly this, that all research should be shut down. You Americans are not only the laughing stock of the world for allowing a moron like Trump to become president but you appear to be on the way out as an actual country because po
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If you remember, Trump tried. He was called xenophobic by the idiot in the white house right now. Protests were set up at airports. Any of this coming back to mind? He tried to keep the infected people from the Diamond Princes away and "resistance" people brought them back anyway ensuring more people were infected because the jet wasn't set up to handle them.
So don't blame Trump. Blame the leftists.
Probably because the sequences we have (Score:5, Interesting)
That said, China would very much like you not to think that, because assuming all the scientific evidence we have (which has been repeatedly verified) is correct then China's very much at fault, but not due to lax lab security or secret military experiments but because they keep tearing down forests which tears down bat habitats which puts people in close contact with bats, who are chock full of corona viruses because bats aren't effected by them due to their biology.
And China does not want to stop tearing down those forests, because as a capitalist nation (who borrowed communist rhetoric) they need rapid economic growth to keep their population mollified/placated. That means deforestation, wet markets, wild animal markets, and other extremely risky and largely unnecessary economic activity that epidemiologists have been warning us about for decades.
BTW, America isn't blameless here either. Our foreign policy encourages all this.
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I also love how the Slashdot headline uses "mysteriously" in front of "deleted". Anyone reading this site that hasn't seen stuff deleted a billion times through casual user error and carelessness is probably not old enough to have worked professionally around computers (or other people).
Actually you have the right wing Indian govt (Score:1)
For the record they won t
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Bats live nowhere near Pangolins (Score:2)
So if it is indeed a chimera of those two, then how did they get put together, as they live nowhere near each other and neither live near Wuhan.
It is quite likely that the virus came from the 6 bat guano minors that got something similar back in 2013, via the WIV. Nothing to do with tearing down forests.
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Like every city - that is not fully fucked up - Wuhan is likely full with bats. If not the city itself, then the surrounding rural areas.
I see bats everywhere I go. Never was in a place without bats. Be it Bangkok, Berlin, Karlsruhe or Paris. The rural area at my Fathers place, my Sisters place or my GFs place.
Unless it is a special bat that needs special conditions: they are everywhere.
Re: (Score:2)
That *is* the party line from Xinnie the Pooh . . .
YouTuber Potholer54 (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Sterilizing the lab? A safety measure!
Destroying all samples at local hospitals, labs and universities? Safety!
Denying international epidemiologists access? Safety!
Scientists from the Wuhan lab who survived have been disappeared? Who told you that?
Insisting on 1st reported cases in Dec with no concern until Jan when the outbreak was a serious epidemic in October?
Why the hell would we need samples from China (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
There are plenty of videos about this market on youtube.
There is nothing wrong with it as in 'bad sanitation practices' - The market could as well be anywhere in Europe.
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The Soviets were known to lie and hide anything related to some bad geopolitical news.
I.e., even if not a drop of radiation has escaped Chernobyl, they still would have lied to the international community about what happened and the dangers of the reactor design.
What I'm saying here, is that it's not weird for them to have done all that shit, whether they do or do no
Re: (Score:2)
25% of Americans and 54% of Republicans still think Trump is the legitimate President.
If it keeps them from attempting another fucking putsch, let 'em have it.
Please check them (Score:1)
It is important to check them and verify they are not manipulated. Random sequences inserted.
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I can't speak to the authenticity of these sequences. If there is competence, I'd expect them to show nothing.
Re: (Score:1)
Again -
Provide a link to those images or shut the fuck up.
Careful (Score:1)
They have to be careful because they do not want to publish data that will incriminate the designers of the virus -- Canada and the United States.
Listen to subject matter experts ... (Score:2)
Just like the scary sounding "gain of function" and "chimeric research", people act like a young kid who finally "discovers" how the meat he eats comes from slaughtering cows, pigs and chicken ... Oh the shock ...
Anyway, for the subject at hand ... ignore the sensational titled original paper (by Jesse Bloom).
Then listen to two experts [microbe.tv] discuss the evidence, with a bunch of virologists. First 45 minutes or so are the relevant part.
sensationalised China smearing 'news' inaccurate.. (Score:1)
... go figure.
You'd have to be an idiot not to realise we're in the midst of a concerted western smear campaign to influence public opinion for future unjustified aggression against China to protect the interests of western elites.
Re: (Score:2)
One would be an idiot to not see the ramping up cold war and it's corresponding propaganda. So I fully agree with you there.
At the same time, let's not pretend that China is a good-faith actor.
for future unjustified aggression against China to protect the interests of western elites.
China has given rational minded people cause for concern. They are currently engaged in internationally condemned (and internationally illegal by treaties they themselves are signatories to) "unjustified aggression" against anyone who isn't them.
The fact that the body politic tends to be mobilized in... fuck,