Virologist Disputes WSJ Report on a Minority Opinion Suggesting Covid 'Lab Leak' Origin (wsj.com) 282
Three long-time Slashdot readers all submitted this story — schwit1, sinij, and DevNull127.
DevNull127 writes: Four U.S. agencies have concluded that the Covid-19 virus originated at the Wuhan market, the Wall Street Journal reports. The U.S. National Intelligence Council reached the same conclusion. Then there's two more agencies (including America's CIA) that are "undecided."
But there is one agency that decided — with "low confidence" — that the virus had somehow leaked from a lab. (And the FBI also decided with "moderate confidence" on that same theory.) "The new report highlights how different parts of the intelligence community have arrived at disparate judgments about the pandemic's origin," writes the Wall Street Journal — adding that unfortunately U.S. officials "declined" to give any details on what led to the Energy Department's position.
The Wall Street Journal also notes: Despite the agencies' differing analyses, the update reaffirmed an existing consensus between them that Covid-19 wasn't the result of a Chinese biological-weapons program, the people who have read the classified report said....
Some scientists argue that the virus probably emerged naturally and leapt from an animal to a human, the same pathway for outbreaks of previously unknown pathogens. Intelligence analysts who have supported that view give weight to "the precedent of past novel infectious disease outbreaks having zoonotic origins," the flourishing trade in a diverse set of animals that are susceptible to such infections, and their conclusion that Chinese officials didn't have foreknowledge of the virus, the 2021 report said.
Also responding to the Department of Energy's outlying position was a virologist at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at Canada's University of Saskatchewan, who posted a series of observations on Twitter: The available evidence shows overwhelmingly that the pandemic started at Huanan market via zoonosis. I have no idea what this evidence that Department of Energy has is. All I know that it is "weak" and resulted in a conclusion of "low confidence".
It reportedly comes from the DOE's own network of national labs rather than through spying. But I do know that to be consistent with the available scientific evidence, the DOE has to explain how the virus emerged twice over 2 wks in humans at the same market the size of a tennis court, over 8 km & across a river from the only lab in Wuhan working on SARSr-CoVs....
Claims of a progenitor at WIV are pure speculation & unsupported by evidence.... Despite 3 years of a global search for this evidence, it has not materialized, while evidence supporting zoonosis associated with Huanan has continued to stack up. At some point, an absence of evidence might just be evidence of absence.
DevNull127 writes: Four U.S. agencies have concluded that the Covid-19 virus originated at the Wuhan market, the Wall Street Journal reports. The U.S. National Intelligence Council reached the same conclusion. Then there's two more agencies (including America's CIA) that are "undecided."
But there is one agency that decided — with "low confidence" — that the virus had somehow leaked from a lab. (And the FBI also decided with "moderate confidence" on that same theory.) "The new report highlights how different parts of the intelligence community have arrived at disparate judgments about the pandemic's origin," writes the Wall Street Journal — adding that unfortunately U.S. officials "declined" to give any details on what led to the Energy Department's position.
The Wall Street Journal also notes: Despite the agencies' differing analyses, the update reaffirmed an existing consensus between them that Covid-19 wasn't the result of a Chinese biological-weapons program, the people who have read the classified report said....
Some scientists argue that the virus probably emerged naturally and leapt from an animal to a human, the same pathway for outbreaks of previously unknown pathogens. Intelligence analysts who have supported that view give weight to "the precedent of past novel infectious disease outbreaks having zoonotic origins," the flourishing trade in a diverse set of animals that are susceptible to such infections, and their conclusion that Chinese officials didn't have foreknowledge of the virus, the 2021 report said.
Also responding to the Department of Energy's outlying position was a virologist at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at Canada's University of Saskatchewan, who posted a series of observations on Twitter: The available evidence shows overwhelmingly that the pandemic started at Huanan market via zoonosis. I have no idea what this evidence that Department of Energy has is. All I know that it is "weak" and resulted in a conclusion of "low confidence".
It reportedly comes from the DOE's own network of national labs rather than through spying. But I do know that to be consistent with the available scientific evidence, the DOE has to explain how the virus emerged twice over 2 wks in humans at the same market the size of a tennis court, over 8 km & across a river from the only lab in Wuhan working on SARSr-CoVs....
Claims of a progenitor at WIV are pure speculation & unsupported by evidence.... Despite 3 years of a global search for this evidence, it has not materialized, while evidence supporting zoonosis associated with Huanan has continued to stack up. At some point, an absence of evidence might just be evidence of absence.
Confused/Interested (Score:5, Insightful)
I am confused that so many different government departments feel the need to spend time and money on investigating and then publishing reports specifically on the "origin" of COVID.
Despite that confusion, I am particularly interested in what expertise that the Dept of Energy might have brought to the table that wasn't available to International Association of Shoemakers or the United Auto Workers Unions (who have yet to release a report AFAIK)
Re: Confused/Interested (Score:2)
There is also just some fear based on superstition. We canâ(TM)t defend against natural outbreaks. So we tend to attribute to acts of mice or god, and pray.
In fact the only weaponizat
Re:Confused/Interested (Score:5, Informative)
If you read the WSJ article, this would not confuse you, as it says: [ quoting WSJ quoting US National Security Advisor ]
So yeah, they didn't "feel the need" to do it -- they were given a specific request by their boss. You can agree or disagree with whether that was a wise or prudent use of their efforts, but that disagreement should be with Mr Biden and not imply that the agency just went off to do it for no reason.
A quick trip to Wikipedia would show you that the DOE operates many of the most prestigious scientific labs in this country and sponsors more physical sciences research than any other agency in the Federal Government. In particular, those labs have a fairly large and deep staff of scientific expertise that the President might be interested in bringing to bear here.
Re:Confused/Interested (Score:4, Insightful)
That's where a lot of government scientists dwell.
While there are plenty of scientist in the DOE, none of them are going to have any specialty in anything to do with Covid. It's like asking your plumber about your cancer, sure he is an expert in his field, but that field isn't what is needed.
Re:Confused/Interested (Score:4, Informative)
Wrong. The US national labs do lots of things not directly related to nuclear weapons. Consider, for instance, Lawrence Livermore's biodefense research [llnl.gov].
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That's where a lot of government scientists dwell.
How many epidemiologists does the Department of Energy employ?
Re:Confused/Interested (Score:4, Informative)
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"Same reason we mock the person arriving to the emergency room without a head during the pandemic who was still tested for COVID."
Why not? No, it won't be what he died of, but he still could have spread it before he died. The contact tracing could save other lives.
When I want to know about the orgins of a virus (Score:5, Funny)
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The US Dept. of Energy is in charge of nuclear weapons development, materials, warhead stockpiles etc. A bit more than "keeping the lights on". It does not have much to do with disease, medicine etc. though.
As for the origin of the SARS-nCoV-2 virus, no-one disputes that the SARS-1 virus was of zoonotic origin. It didn't spread fast and far and was contained and so it didn't get the press and public attention of the 2019 SARS virus, that's all.
The Wall Street Journal is a curious publication -- it is absolu
Argument from authority is not a fallacy (Score:5, Insightful)
They all agree it came from Wuhan (Score:2, Insightful)
We also know the Chinese government punished the doctor who first reported the outbreak and forced him to recant. That doctor later died from covid. Whether it came from a wet market or from a lab does not matter. The Chinese government is responsible for the pandemic and is still completely mishandling their response to it.
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further it spread from the city first according to reports,
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He received the best care possible at the time right away.
Did he?
Evidence? (Score:2, Interesting)
We live in an era where even WITH evidence proving that Covid came solely from the market, Republicans would still use this to claim Biden is either soft on China or a pawn of China and that the US is letting China run roughshod over us and the whole thing was organized by Democrats+Media+Soros.
Reminds me of The Simpsons (Score:2)
While not directly related [youtube.com], it does relate to Dr. Angela Rasmussen's comment about wanting to see the evidence:
But I do know that to be consistent with the available scientific evidence, the DOE has to explain how the virus emerged twice over 2 wks in humans at the same market the size of a tennis court, over 8 km & across a river from the only lab in Wuhan working on SARSr-CoVs....
It should be noted the confidence of this report [cnn.com], that covid started in a Chinese lab, is low:
Two sources said that the Department of Energy assessed in the intelligence report that it had “low confidence” the Covid-19 virus accidentally escaped from a lab in Wuhan.
Intelligence agencies can make assessments with either low, medium or high confidence. A low confidence assessment generally means that the information obtained is not reliable enough or is too fragmented to make a more definitive analytic judgment or that there is not enough information available to draw a more robust conclusion.
As always, show the evidence. Though in this case, doing so would most likely jepordize sources and methods so we'll probably never see how this determination was made.
Conspiracy Theory (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:3)
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China certainly isn't going to help you prosecute China. Any chance of having an international investigation into the origin of COVID went out the window as soon as people started to talk about blame and compensation.
I don't think we can do anything to fix it either. As soon as a new virus is found we will want to stop travel from that country, despite it likely being too late anyway. So that country of origin will want to downplay it and find reasons to claim it came from somewhere else.
Internationally or
We'll probably never know (Score:3)
At this point the trail may be too cold to definitively answer the origin question. But the contention made by the University of Saskatchewan virologist that "the DOE has to explain how the virus emerged twice over 2 wks in humans at the same market the size of a tennis court, over 8 km & across a river from the only lab in Wuhan working on SARSr-CoVs" seems pretty weak.
8 km isn't very far at all - I'm sure people in that region walk that far and more daily - and presumably there's a bridge across the river. It seems likely that lab employees, and/or friends and family, visited the market. And asymptomatic infection has always been a thing with this virus. Given this, and the lack of an animal "patient zero", zoonotic origin and lab-leak origin seem equally likely to me.
Instead of virologists, I'd really rather hear epidemiologists weighing in on this question. I think they're better equipped to look at all the disease vector variables and evaluate the likelihood of one scenario or the other.
Slashdot editorial bias once again (Score:2)
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Unfortunately, proof is hard among outright lies (Score:5, Insightful)
It's difficult to provide compelling proof for a lab leak when China has lied so much, and so consistently, about Covid's spread. Examine this case of China repressing reports to understand that analyzing China's numbers on the start and source of its spread are very unreliable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Citing the timing of early reports as proof of the wet market origin theory is simply not reliable, especially when Chinse bureaucrats would wish to desperately conceal an accidental outbreak from a government research lab with now verified reports of their unsafe practices.
See List of People Who Are Suprised! (Score:2)
Follow the money (Score:2)
Who benefits financially if the wet market leak theory prevails? Virology funding goes up.
Who benefits financially if the accidental lab leak theory prevails? Lab security and safety funding may go up but all other funding goes down because the scientists and bureaucrats can't be trusted.
Follow the money
ofcourse.. (Score:3)
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And yes I am aware that this is about the virologist disputing the obvious truth. If you can't see that this is little more than a way to control the reaction and dampen resentment you aren't bothering to open your eyes.
Re: And another of the covid lies goes down. (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not a lie. It's a bad hypothesis - one that turned out to have very weak support. An overwhelming problem with this entire affair is how The Science was treated as some sort of holy canon. "Trust the science!" or else you're a heretic. It was a mockery of the scientific method Now the blowback has happened.
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Trust. The. Science. is another call-to-arms like BLM. You have to support it, blindly, or else you're wrong.
Do I trust science? Yes, but I generally prefer to verify some things. I got my jabs - i'm not a "mutated DNA nonsense" person but I also still have questions. Statistics, as I understand them, seem to align with MOST people weren't really at risk. The sick, elderly, and immunocompromised certainly were - but they're also the same people who die from influenza regularly.
And hey, since I menti
Re: And another of the covid lies goes down. (Score:5, Insightful)
The scientific method has held up. A minority view the "low" confidence does not overthrow science. This is all a win for science - science recognized the virus early, science made sure there was a vaccine, and science has concluded that is most likely escaped from a market the same as many other viruses in the past. Some non-science people refuse to believe that, but those non-science people probably think the vaccine has nanobots in it to reprogram everyone to be communist :-)
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"However, for my part, the most alarming aspect [of the government response] was the censorship, not the science. There will continue to be a debate over the origins of COVID-19, but now there will be a debate. For years, the media and government allied to treat anyone raising a lab theory as one of three possibilities: conspiracy theorist or racists or racist conspiracy theorists.
"Censorship does not, as President Biden claims, save lives. It
Re: And another of the covid lies goes down. (Score:4, Funny)
You people make me want to sign on with the Chinese.
Re: And another of the covid lies goes down. (Score:4, Informative)
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He's a fucking genius.
Re: And another of the covid lies goes down. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: And another of the covid lies goes down. (Score:2)
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Stated as if you don't know that China is one of the largest holders of U.S. debt.
Re: And another of the covid lies goes down. (Score:3)
In wars, debts to the other side tend to be the first thing written off of the balance sheet.
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The fact that it remains in dispute is what bothers me. There is a lab that is suspect. Why 199 countries go to the lab and conduct an independent investigation, come hell or high water to either clear the CCP if found innocent or hang them if found guilty a la the Nuremberg trials, is beyond me; and not what I presume my taxes are collected and spent on. We should be demanding better of our governments. If the Chinese were researching Corona viruses and conducting gain of function research, and that research, whether intentionally or unintentionally caused the death of 50 million people and a global economic disaster; then the Chinese Communist Party should be annihilated and China should be occupied until a legitimate government can be installed in accordance with what the rest of the world deems safe and trustworthy, like what happened in Germany. If members of our own government are found to be complicit; they should be punished capitally, by hanging, in a public square.
If you are in the USA, then your tax money is mostly going toward ensuring that the USA has an enemy, at least on paper. So they can spend huge amounts of money on global military domination. Er, I mean defense!
Honestly, USA vs China is like my wife vs me; I can't possibly be allowed to have not done something hostile. The narrative requires that I'm the bad guy!
We have ALWAYS been at war with Eastasia! You can't deny it, or else you'll have to be re-educated!
Re: And another of the covid lies goes down. (Score:4, Insightful)
If the Chinese were researching Corona viruses and conducting gain of function research
Fauci, under oath, already admitted to this. He just avoided the word "gain of function"
i.e, Fauci did not say this.
Re: And another of the covid lies goes down. (Score:5, Informative)
There is no dispute that they were modifying covid viruses in a way that would allow them to infect humans. The debate is (largely) because they were modifying the viruses with the intention to infect humanized mice. The fact that they would possibly infect humans was a side effect. So it's unclear whether that falls under the official definition of "gain of function." Virologists themselves disagree (as shown in the story I linked to above).
Re: And another of the covid lies goes down. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's irrelevant because there's no evidence it escaped from the lab. Also the research into viruses is not about weaponizing them but about studying them for better defenses. Even gain of function is usually for this purpose. The thing is, if there's a huge leap of logic, the conspiracy theorists will jump on it. They _know_ it's true, by faith, so no amount of logic unconvinces them.
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It's irrelevant because there's no evidence it escaped from the lab
There's a bunch of evidence. There's no conclusive evidence, sure, but that's why we're still looking for more evidence either way.
Re: And another of the covid lies goes down. (Score:4, Informative)
There is evidence. Since suggesting a lab leak it has been discovered that there is a lab for the leak to come from, that the lab in question was the primary facility researching the precursor virus, the chief researcher on that program has come forward saying she believes the virus leaked and it has been proven that the research programs there modified the virus to infect humans. And of course FOIA requests have revealed a grant submission to the DoD for a gain of function project from the same folks who were running this CDC funded one. Also there is a great deal of evidence of a cover up both on the part of the Chinese state and elements within the CDC, including Dr. Anthony Fauci.
None of this is in dispute (aside from Fauci disputing wrongdoing of course) and the evidence supporting these points is all evidence of a lab leak. Conclusive? No, but there probably isn't conclusive evidence to be had for either side of this debate.
Those suggesting the virus didn't come from the lab have to explain how, across hundreds of thousands of years and across the entire planet this virus happens to mutate naturally a mere 8km away from the lab where we now know humans mutated it and not only did it happen to mutate next door but they have to explain WHEN. The last one is the critical element. On the point of where they can point to the reason the research was performed there. But on the point of chronological proximity there is nothing. The probability of the virus mutating to infect humans is naturally is one thing, the probability that it happened to do so during the tiny window of history in which humans were artificially doing exactly that is extraordinarily low... to claim that is coincidence is an extraordinary claim and there is no extraordinary evidence to back it up.
Re:And another of the covid lies goes down. (Score:4, Funny)
Now if you'll excuse me, it's time for my 4 o'clock horse paste enema.
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What's interesting to me is that there's this confidence in zoonosis, something which isn't even at odds with a lab leak hypothesis, due to it matching a bat sample from a far away province studied at Wuhan, but we're supposed to believe it was the wet market at fault because of a study done by China who all along acted to cover this up until it was too late. Never mind that the wet market didn't sell bats or pangolins according to published research, the novel genes in Covid vs. the bat sample seem to be [frontiersin.org]
Re:And another of the covid lies goes down. (Score:5, Informative)
I don't think that we'll ever actually know unless China were to have an equivalent of Glasnost that effectively admitted that it came from the lab.
The complication is that zoonosis doesn't mean that it didn't come from a lab. Sure, there are now advanced techniques to edit DNA, but just because those techniques now exist doesn't mean that older techniques of exposure and/or incubation in animal hosts are no longer possible or no longer performed. Researchers may be able to confirm with a high degree of certainty that completely man-made techniques were not involved in SARS-CoV-2 coming to be, but that may not exclude anything from poor handling and boarding of test-animals to intentional exposure of a host animal to two diseases.
In short, so long as the natural processes that could result in zoonotic transfer are possible, one cannot exclude the possibility of those processes occurring within a laboratory setting. It's only the opposite, that some laboratory processes are impossible in the natural setting, that can be proven.
And while it would be nice to know, it's not really the important part anymore. There aren't going to be any sort of reparations, and no one is going to willingly accept blame. The thing for us to focus on now is the public-health response. To ensure that our vaccine development processes are running at full steam and that we continue to keep ourselves up-to-date on our inoculations. And that we fight back against disinformation from people looking to enhance their own power by lying to us about the dangers that this SARS/MERS/SARS-CoV-2 family pose to us.
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I don't think that we'll ever actually know unless China were to have an equivalent of Glasnost that effectively admitted that it came from the lab.
Biden has been pushing hard on all agencies to find the answer (according to the WSJ report). So there's going to be a lot of data coming out in the next couple years, one way or another.
So the problem with blaming lab leaks (Score:5, Insightful)
In fact it's extremely likely that China is encouraging people to believe it was a lab leak because it distracts from the actual cause of the problem, deforestation and the wet markets. China's rural economies depend heavily on both of those things and in the wake of covid-19 they haven't stopped either of them.
On the other hand the right wing in America and other countries would really like to blame it on the lab Leak because that would focus a great deal of anger against China without also affecting China's economy and money making capabilities. And the right wing would like very much for us all to be very angry at China and not paying any attention to the fact that they were in charge when this disaster happened.
Bottom line being distracted by the lab leak bullshit means that the actual problems won't be addressed and this is just going to happen again. On the plus side a lot of shareholder value will be created
They prefer to be called the thermally coagulated (Score:3)
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But I'm not woke so I'm not going to use pronouns.
Of course, "I" is a pronoun ... :-)
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But I'm not woke so I'm not going to use pronouns.
Pronoun nametags are like Covid masks. If you feel like you need to wear one, you probably should be wearing one.
Besides, as a gay guy, I'm allowed to joke about this right? Or does the loophole about poking fun at your own community only apply when it's an issue of race? Now I'm definitely going to hell.
I think the rule that your allowed to poke fun only applies if your an openly and flamboyantly gay guy who makes everyone around them uncomfortable with public sexual displays.
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Too be honest straight people can be like that too.
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Too be honest straight people can be like that too.
Yes! And lots of 'drag queens' are actually straight!!!111
The Jewish space laser thing (Score:2, Insightful)
And Fox News won't shut up about George Soros because he's a Jew and their dog whistling to the neo-nazis in their audience. Your side is the one that says Fox News is the number one cable TV network on America TV. Again hardly a fring
Please assume good faith (Score:4)
The entire foundation of reasoned debate rests upon the assumption of good faith by both sides, that the goal of the debate is for both sides to reach a more enlightened position closer to the truth. If you start denying someone the autonomy to claim (or potentially change) their own positions, the foundation crumples and reasoned debate is impossible and you just push people further into tribalism.
I can't tell you how frustrating it is to talk to people who have already decided I am part of some great evil and refuse to even grant me my own opinions; if I say I do or don't believe something, they just tell me I'm lying, because that's what people like me do. There's no way to have a reasonable exchange with someone who is doing that, the foundation just isn't there to begin with.
Re:No. I won't (Score:4)
Yeah because they're all politically motivated (Score:4, Informative)
The through wine through all of these is racism and nationalism which are the backbone of fascism. So yeah horrifying positions by extremist lunatics.
If you've got a problem with that nobody's forcing you to believe these things. You can stop anytime you want.
Re:Yeah because they're all politically motivated (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem here is not "suggesting" it. The problem is that many people repeat this non stop despite lack of evidence. Even here, the news that this idea had "low confidence" fired people up and you saw them here jumping in with this as their evidence.
This is like the bad cop who claims that denying the charges is proof of guilt because innocent people don't deny charges. Here the lack of solid evidence is being used as evidence, it's bad reasoning.
Re:And another of the covid lies goes down. (Score:4, Insightful)
...the effectiveness of masks, to the vaccines effectiveness and the need for lockdowns...
Anecdotally, my partner and I both wore masks when out in public and followed the distancing guidelines. We didn't catch Covid until well after the vaccines had been out for awhile and he'd returned to working in an office. He caught it from someone at his office who ended up testing positive, and then I caught it from him. We both were up-to-date on our shots.
If I believed in conspiracies I'd say the vaccine didn't work, but the reality is that the virus had mutated and the vaccines weren't as effective against the mutated strains. Still, I'll take what ended up essentially being a week-long head cold over whatever it could've possibly been had we'd not gotten the vaccine.
As for the economy, the supply chains broke on a global scale. Even if the USA had ignored the virus completely, we'd still be dealing with exactly the same shortages and inflation issues present today, and more people would've died.
Re:And another of the covid lies goes down. (Score:5, Insightful)
The bigger issue is that as a scientist -- or a Twitter nobody -- you would have been "cancelled" for saying what is now mainstream.
That perversion of science is a sign how low the society has fallen. And it is one side that bears the blame for it, the side that was formerly known as liberal.
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Correct. This is not about science at all, but about interest groups seizing the mantle of science and replacing it with propaganda.
It's no different than tetra ethyl lead being promoted as safe or sugars as the foundation of good nutrition.
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There are prominent people within the scientific institution who got corrupted by this power, and corrupted the institution in return.
It is said that the Church is never in greater danger than when it is acclaimed by the State. There might be some truth to it when it comes to Science as well.
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perhaps not of science, but of scientists (Score:3)
The COVID-19 origin arguments certainly exposed a perversion of scientists and likely damaged the reputation of science generally, and of all scientists - not only the tainted ones, but also those who supported, or stayed silent about, the silencing of those who did not toe the line.
There were plenty of people in science and medicine [no, I am not portraying bloggers as scientists] who were concerned that COVID-19 originated in the Wuhan virology lab, but the people at the top of the field (Dr Fauci, Dr Col
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you would have been "cancelled" for saying what is now mainstream
No one cares about lunatics when they can no longer hurt people.
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>That perversion of science is a sign how low the society has fallen.
The biggest hypocrisy of the lockdowns have to be the BLM protests of summer 2020. Literally after months (February, March, April, May) of being told "stay indoors, don't do any unnecessary travel, stay 6 feet apart, trust the science" etc. in addition to lockdown protestors being called idiots or extremists, all of a sudden it's perfectly acceptable to have thousands of people crowding together in public shouting slogans at the top of
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Neither thing helped, or else Covid would not have spread rapidly through China - a culture already heavily using masks at all times when out of the house.
The virus did tend to spread more readily through urban environments, so perhaps that came down to an inability to maintain distance from other people while out in public?
During the period of the pandemic prior to vaccine availability, we tried to limit our shopping trips to off-peak times, and since we live in the suburbs, car culture provided its own form of social distancing (though it was pretty funny to see some people wearing a mask while driving their vehicle). I'd imagine in cities where most peopl
Re:And another of the covid lies goes down. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:And another of the covid lies goes down. (Score:4, Informative)
Masks worked so well, politicians suppressed reports of their effectiveness [stlpublicradio.org], then lied about the cover up.
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That is a logical fallacy, You don't know how fast it would have spread inside China without their cultural usage of masks. Also we have actual data from US due to states first mandating, then removing the mask mandate and then reissuing the mask mandate again: https://www.healthaffairs.org/... [healthaffairs.org] and the data from that is clear that the mask mandates did decrease the spread.
I just assumed that the reason why the right wing side of the US was against masks was that they might interfere with facial recognition camera systems.
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Re: And another of the covid lies goes down. (Score:4, Informative)
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China - a culture already heavily using masks at all times when out of the house.
That is 100% not true. The best you could say is that Chinese people wore masks more often than Americans, but not enough to stop a pandemic.
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That what I did. Unvaxxed, went hiking 5 miles and was symptomless on the second day.
Not everyone reacts the same way to a Covid infection. One of my friends caught Covid from a woman he was dating, right when it first began widely spreading. He was completely asymptomatic.
On the other hand, there's my partner's father, who completely ignored all the masking/social distance guidelines, did end up catching Covid, and had a rough go of it for almost an entire month. I don't have anyone to compare a non-vaxxed infection to in my immediate family, because they all got their shots. None of t
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>... be held accountable
That will never happen. The people that perpetuated this are not able to view reality let alone begin to comprehend it. There will be no justice in our lifetimes. This will be buried and dismissed like many other things they call conspiracy theories.
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They didn't lie about the origin, they said (at the time) it was probably zoological, which is still the consensus. The masks (N95, that is) work because they protect your respiratory tract which is the main way the virus can get into your body. The lockdowns were necessary to prevent people (like you) from spreading the virus around before the vaccines were widely dispensed.
Now, go ask your mother for some milk and cookies and a bit of quiet time.
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I mean ... if you want a trivial example of how politics matters more than even common sense:
Trump banned travel from China and got branded a racist by practically the entire media and left. In retrospect, now having access to information that was probably high-level privileged at the time, that was 110% the right call. Heck Biden implemented similar on several occasions with little fanfare. Also in retrospect, the world was not equipped to deal with early covid containment and then they we're equally no
Re:This ought to be a civil discussion (Score:5, Interesting)
But it won't be. You branch covidians are too invested in your new religion to be able to back down now. So despite the recent mask study, and now this, threatening to undermine your dogma, you'll continue to profess your faith. I look forward to when you all find out about the "vaccines". That'll be hilarious.
It is true that there is a lot of incivility about these issues. That incivility is due to a) general high partisanship and b) The very high stakes nature of these issues. But what is hilarious is that you complain about incivility while insulting people you disagree with. So let's be clear: You are combining three different claims, a) Whether Covid was a lab leak b) Whether masks are effective at preventing covid spread and c) whether vaccines are effective at reducing the effects of covid, and wrapping them all together so that someone who disagrees with you on one must disagree with you on others and hence must be in single blob-like category of Hated Others. But this does not follow. One can disagree about one or another and not on the others. To use an obvious example, Nate Silver has been in favor of masking and very in favor of vaccines, but also thinks that much of the general scientific community is underestimating the chance of a lab leak. Regarding your specific comment about masking, it sounds like you are thinking of the recent Cochran meta-analysis. That study has a lot of issues. I recommend reading https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2023/2/22/23609499/masks-covid-coronavirus-cochrane-review-pandemic-science-studies-infection [vox.com] for a start.
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b) Whether masks are effective at preventing covid spread
This really needs to be broken down into two general cases. A) Do masks protect you personally from Covid and if so how well and B) Do masks prevent community spread of a disease where many are highly contagious before any symptoms and therefore protect me indirectly. Because Covid is aerosolized and among the most contagious diseases known, A) is poorly to not at all unless you use a N95 or equivalent better filter, the mask is fitted so there are no leaks (tested on medical professionals by seeing if
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...Pretty simple to understand really, but the vast majority of conservatives don't give a damn if they stumble into an old folks home positive and hack all over eventually killing 4 people. Only things affecting them personally ever come into consideration.
Just to remind you, it was a disgraced Democrat leader who infamously drained emergency supplies and bed expansion efforts who was forced to send the sick back to nursing homes where they killed a lot more than intended.
And just to remind you of fucking reality, mass narcissism leading to don't-give-a-fuck-about-anyone-but-ME syndrome, is hardly a "conservative" problem. It's a global problem propagated by Greed in social media. You look like a fucking moron trying to say otherwise.
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"Trust the Science" was always a terrible phrase, and you are welcome to go through my Slashdot history and see if I have ever used it. (Hint: The answer will be no.)
I looked through your history, and found a post where you used that phrase twice [slashdot.org]. Go ahead and recant.
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You branch covidians are too invested in your new religion to be able to back down now.
It's far worse than that. They are, literally, addicted to fear. They have lost the ability to live without it. They're too afraid of not being afraid to interact with reality any more.
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"Hold China accountable?" How do we do that?
Considering that China got hit pretty hard by Covid, one would hope they learned their own lesson.
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Considering that China got hit pretty hard by Covid, one would hope they learned their own lesson.
They have not. A lockdown is meant as a temporary measure to give you time to develop a viable vaccine and inoculate your population. The vaccine they produced is shit. Almost useless. So the lockdown has remained in effect with no system in place to provide essential supplies to the population. This has resulted in widespread protests because people are literally starving to death.
China is a lesson on how to NOT react to an epidemic.
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we'd have this kind of virus breaking out all the time with wet markets still in heavy use around the world.
Among the many problems with the comment, we do have spillover events like COVID-19 happening regularly (about once a decade). COVID-19 was significantly more contagious, so it caused more of a problem but we have fairly regular flu pandemics and SARS1/MERS as recent examples. And there was a paper recently showing that climate change forcing migration events, leading to interactions between species that had not previously had much contact, means we should expect more in the future (and the damage is alread
Re:Three Things (Score:5, Informative)
we'd have this kind of virus breaking out all the time with wet markets still in heavy use around the world.
Zoonotic diseases are fairly common. HIV began that way, as did various forms of influenza.
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but zoonotic diseases are actually very common. Like, here's about 50:
https://www.cdc.gov/healthypet... [cdc.gov]
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It is beyond stupid that there is a single person alive who does not inherently understand Covid escaped from the Wuhan lab
Thankyou internet nobody. We take your word over that of virologists and researchers any time. Oh wait. You're not an internet nobody. You're Superkendall, and we'll just assume that whatever you say is the opposite of reality. So in some weird twisted way we agree with you.
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DOE has to explain how the virus emerged twice over 2 wks in humans at the same market the size of a tennis court, over 8 km & across a river from the only lab in Wuhan working on SARSr-CoVs
One or more carriers before them went unidentified and infected them both.
8 km & across a river from the only lab in Wuhan working on SARSr-CoVs
Bridges, trains, plains, automobiles and feet.
Going straight for bioweapons is dishonest rhetoric. Not that I expect a virologist to even say gain of function ... it's wrong speak, only chuds like me can even use those words any more. At most they can be put in quotation marks while replying to a chud in 2023. Genetic engineering or forced mutation of the virus for animal experiments, with a subsequent leak, are always going to remain a likely and politically incorrect hypothesis. With forced mutation not even allowing for any real evidence in the genome.
You ignored the main issue the virologist pointed out.
No one has ever shown that the lab had a progenitor to engineer or accidentally release in the first place.
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It's not like the research of even western labs is open access.
Why do I have to show proof of it existing, when that proof is unlikely to be available? It's like forcing the virologist to explain the huge evolutionary gap to RaTG13. Nature is not obliged to preserve all what she has created, neither are Chinese labs.
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No one has ever shown that the lab had a progenitor to engineer or accidentally release in the first place.
Poe's law seems to apply here.
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Well, the NYT can and has ignored quite a bit. Though the masks were BS, I'm glad wearing of masks was normalized. Now you can wear a mask and conceal your identity anywhere you want and people will just think you're a leftard.