Covid-19 likely to be man made

Unicorn Milk Latte

PintOfView wrote: »

Since when were the mainstream media not free to talk?
I've seen discussion on the origin of Covid since it started.

This.

I remember when virologists were asked mid-2020 about the origin, they said the exact same thing that Fauci says today:

No chance of being lab made, a very small possibility of a natural virus escaping from a research lab, very high probability of natural occurrence, because there have been lots of precedents with other viruses. Let's investigate scientifically, (not politically).



The main stream media being 'not free to talk' is a paranoid conspiracy fantasy.

It's a global pandemic, so 'media' means all media in many countries with vastly different political systems, cultures, interests.


Here in the real world: if the main stream media see news that would be sensational, like a virus created in a lab, there is no chance they would ignore it - it's their business, not releasing something like that would put any news outlet at a disadvantage to their competitors.

mcsean2163

Interesting podcast on covid19 origin and commentary on how mainstream organisations such as Facebook blocked discussion of a potential lab leak

https://thefedorachronicles.com/podcast/2021/2021-05-27-lab-leak-mainstream.html

Dohnjoe

lucernarian wrote: »

Do you think the signatories of the letter to Science are part of the conspiracy community? The likes of Alina Chan or Prof. Ralph Baric?

I don't know them, so I can't tell you that. I am only interested in the scientific consensus, which is that the virus is natural, not "man-made"

I'm trying to get a measure of the meaning of the phrase, whether it's there to point out a fringe of Twitter lunatics, or a tool of rhetoric used to dismiss legitimate scientific discussion about the general topic.

Any popular conspiracy forum, e.g. Reddit's conspiracy community

Unicorn Milk Latte

Context:

Facebook is still the number one source of misinformation on the planet.

If Facebook removes 'information', it's means that it's so batsh*t crazy that it's too much even for the disinformation kings.

mcsean2163

Vanity fair writeup on DRASTIC team that were dismissed as idiots by a poster on this forum.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/06/the-lab-leak-theory-inside-the-fight-to-uncover-covid-19s-origins

This is a great quote.

Dr. Richard Ebright, board of governors professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Rutgers University, said that from the very first reports of a novel bat-related coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, it took him “a nanosecond or a picosecond” to consider a link to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Only two other labs in the world, in Galveston, Texas, and Chapel Hill, North Carolina, were doing similar research. “It’s not a dozen cities,” he said. “It’s three places.”

Dohnjoe

Unicorn Milk Latte wrote: »

This.

I remember when virologists were asked mid-2020 about the origin, they said the exact same thing that Fauci says today:

No chance of being lab made, a very small possibility of a natural virus escaping from a research lab, very high probability of natural occurrence, because there have been lots of precedents with other viruses. Let's investigate scientifically, (not politically).



The main stream media being 'not free to talk' is a paranoid conspiracy fantasy.

It's a global pandemic, so 'media' means all media in many countries with vastly different political systems, cultures, interests.


Here in the real world: if the main stream media see news that would be sensational, like a virus created in a lab, there is no chance they would ignore it - it's their business, not releasing something like that would put any news outlet at a disadvantage to their competitors.

Yes but that isn't "exciting" enough for some

It's far more interesting to believe it was deliberately altered or created in a lab and released as some sort of "bio-weapon" or that the "bio-weapon under development accidentally leaked the lab".

Those who believe the above are clearly latching on to a separate theory, that it could have accidentally leaked from the lab, and melding the two together.

Cheering on one by cheering on the other.

banie01

Had a read through Alina Chan's Twitter feed and she was kind enough to direct me to an older thread that dealt with a claimed early detection in Barcelona in @March 2019(Discredited totally).
And of far more interest to me, her review of the Italian study claiming late Sept/Early Oct detections of Covid antibodies.

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1349163446143746052?s=19

Her review makes a very compelling case to shape the Italian detections as false positives, due to a poor and unverified assay.

That pushes the outbreak back to Wuhan in December and means that refutes my earlier holding of the Italian study as undermining the possibility of 3 Wuhan lab assistants being possibly patient 0.

It puts Wuhan, the lab and the Chinese response and transparency with regards to their Data and sample history firmly front and centre in the investigation.
Her explanation and review of the studies claiming earlier Ex-china detections do a robust job of refuting those findings IMO.
Her tweet above and the studies linked from her twitter provide for interesting reading.

So I'd like to put my previously stated support for the Italian study and my excusing of its methodology aside and withdraw my support for pre-December 2019 circulation of Covid outside of Wuhan/China.

King Mob

So since Fauci's emails have been "leaked" and there's nothing in there about the virus being released on purpose to create a pandemic, can we all agree that this particular theory has been completely disproven?

Markus Antonius

Unicorn Milk Latte wrote: »

No emails were leaked.


Fauci's emails were disclosed via Freedom of Information Act, which is a perfectly normal, legal process.


Fauci has stated, ad nauseam, that a lab leak origin is highly unlikely, but thorough scientific methodology demands to look into it, because it's a theoretical possibility, however small.

This BBC article completely contradicts what you are saying:

"This May, Dr Fauci said he is "not convinced" the virus originated naturally and expressed support for an investigation."

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57336280

How about you park the paraphrasing and give us some quotes?

Unicorn Milk Latte

Markus Antonius wrote: »

How about you park the paraphrasing and give us some quotes?

Sure. Fauci, from earlier today:

geospatial

So, the first problem in the interview is the interviewer asked about April 2020 as the date the lab conspiracy was raised. The email to Fauci from Anderson suggesting the virus could be engineered was January 31st. So when the journalist starts out with an erroneous question you have to somewhat disregard the answer.

The lab leak conspiracy was raised by a number of Chinese dissidents in early January. Any journalist worth their salt would know that.

geospatial

Sorry, being new I can't post links.

The genome for SARS-2 was released in mid January, and research virologists worldwide immediately started to study it. January 31st a leading US research virologist emailed Fauci with his impressions there was evidence of unnatural evolution or perhaps engineering in a new SARS virus. Within three days the director of the company responsible for US funding of the lab in Wuhan was crafting a response and emailing fellow virologists for support. A conference call was held between Feb 1 and 3 involving leading US virologists, who were either funding or collaborating with gain of function research in Wuhan. Within a few days everyone was on board with a narrative, within two weeks Anderson had publicly rebutted his earlier hypothesis in his letter to Nature. The virus was from natural origin, end of story.

End of science. Anderson's letter to Nature (it's a correspondence not a research paper) published in March and written in early February is an absolute disgrace to science as he had no idea at that point how the virus had evolved. To claim as he did that "our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 was not a laboratory construct or a purposely manipulated virus" is utter bull****, he had no way of knowing that at the time. We still have no idea ffs, 16 months later.

But we will find out, in that I trust.

King Mob

geospatial wrote: »

But we will find out, in that I trust.

So, if the American investigation that's now underway finishes and says that there's no evidence to show a lab origin or that the lab origin is false, will you accept that that conclusion?

Tenger

mcsean2163 wrote: »

Interesting podcast on covid19 origin and commentary on how mainstream organisations such as Facebook blocked discussion of a potential lab leak...........

I immediate dislike this source due to their use of the term "Mainstream Media" and "the Left".

Obvious bias from the podcast description. Looking at other episodes it's a pro Trump podcast.


Back on topic, obviously there is a chance that the virus was man-made, or maybe of natural origins but manipulated in a lab.
But based on history and probability it was more likely to be Zoonotic origin (which doesn't mean "bar soup") You can believe the latter while being open to the former.

Thus I would still support an international investigation into the origins of Covid-19. A similar investigation for SARS was able to trace it back to a specific cave system in China.

splashuum

I’m having serious issues trying to comprehend peoples thinking. Imagine believing the virus occurred naturally in a wet market when coincidentally the biggest virology lab in China is a only few hundred metres down the road from it. You have to seriously wonder whether common sense gone has out the window?

banie01

splashuum wrote: »

I’m having serious issues trying to comprehend peoples thinking. Imagine believing the virus occurred naturally in a wet market when coincidentally the biggest virology lab in China is a only few hundred metres down the road from it. You have to seriously wonder whether common sense gone has out the window?

Other than coincidence?
What actual evidence is there to support your assertion?
Also, when you started the thread your assertion was that the virus is man-made?
Do you still think so?
Is it a De Novo creation? A Bio-weapon gone awry?
A deliberate or accidental release?

There is also a very good reason that the Wuhan lab is where it is.
There is a long history of zoonotic emergence in the area, there are massive bat and small mammal populations in the vicinity and a concurrent history of both human consumption and close contact with said mammals.
That could further allow for coincidence rather than leak.

The lab needs to be investigated, health records and sample history held in Wuhan needs review and assessment.
But, again you are rushing headlong into a conclusion with zero supporting evidence other than coincidence.

Regarding the virus origin and progenitor.
An interesting paper here, it's pre-print so review is not underway but feel free to shoot it down.
https://academic.oup.com/mbe/advance-article/doi/10.1093/molbev/msab118/6257226

In particular:

We report the likely most recent common ancestor of SARS-CoV-2, reconstructed through a novel application and advancement of computational methods initially developed to infer the mutational history of tumor cells in a patient. This progenitor genome differs from genomes of the first coronaviruses sampled in China by three variants, implying that none of the earliest patients represent the index case or gave rise to all the human infections. However, multiple coronavirus infections in China and the USA harbored the progenitor genetic fingerprint in January 2020 and later, suggesting that the progenitor was spreading worldwide months before and after the first reported cases of COVID-19 in China. Mutations of the progenitor and its offshoots have produced many dominant coronavirus strains, which have spread episodically over time. Fingerprinting based on common mutations reveals that the same coronavirus lineage has dominated North America for most of the pandemic in 2020.

geospatial

King Mob wrote: »

So, if the American investigation that's now underway finishes and says that there's no evidence to show a lab origin or that the lab origin is false, will you accept that that conclusion?

That depends on the evidence presented. I actually lean towards natural origin myself, most likely cell passaging in a mink farm, but that's just my opinion. I'm concerned about all the obfuscation going on though, like claiming their was no "gain of function" research going on in Wuhan.

The only way to truly exclude lab origin is to get access to the lab notebooks and data from the WIV. The recent WHO investigation didn't even ask to get access to this data which in itself is staggering. Will the US investigation get access to it in your opinion?

Mic 1972

splashuum wrote: »

I’m having serious issues trying to comprehend peoples thinking. Imagine believing the virus occurred naturally in a wet market when coincidentally the biggest virology lab in China is a only few hundred metres down the road from it. You have to seriously wonder whether common sense gone has out the window?

Agreed
Also, there are very few labs in the world currently doing the type of virus research that is being done in Wuhan.
If the Wuhan lab had really nothing to do with the virus we would have been swamped with evidence of it

King Mob

splashuum wrote: »

I’m having serious issues trying to comprehend peoples thinking. Imagine believing the virus occurred naturally in a wet market when coincidentally the biggest virology lab in China is a only few hundred metres down the road from it. You have to seriously wonder whether common sense gone has out the window?

What's hard to understand?
Why would people believe in things for which there's no evidence supporting them?

Sure it's a coincidence that there was a big viral lab nearby where the virus was first identified. But as Bainie09 points out, there's probably reasons for that coincidence.

Additionally, the fact that it was was so close to the lab would discount several of the popular conspiracy theories being suggested here.
If the plot was to release a virus to cause/fake a global pandemic, why release it in a place so obvious that it would give the game away? It makes no sense to do that, so we can conclude that that theory is probably wrong, right?

Again, no one single person here has said that it was impossible that the virus escaped from a lab.

King Mob

geospatial wrote: »

That depends on the evidence presented.

I think that this causes a problem, especially in the more conspiracy minded than yourself.
We're seeing people declare the fact the US is taking the lab origin more seriously as proof the lab origin is true.
But I think that if/when the investigation doesn't support the lab origin, people will start declaring that the Americans are involved in the conspiracy again.

If the American investigation doesn't produce evidence adequate to your standards, do you believe that this will be due to a cover up on their part?
If that's the case, why do you believe that they are now giving more credence to the lab origin theory?

geospatial wrote: »

I'm concerned about all the obfuscation going on though, like claiming their was no "gain of function" research going on in Wuhan.

Sure. This is an actual concern and it seems that most conspiracy theorists have either missed this or simply don't care because it's not very exciting.
It's also an issue that's independent of the lab origin. It's entirely possible that the virus is completely natural, but elements in the US still don't want to expose if there was gain of function research in the lab. Or they don't even want people to look too closely at the possibility there was.

geospatial wrote: »

The only way to truly exclude lab origin is to get access to the lab notebooks and data from the WIV. The recent WHO investigation didn't even ask to get access to this data which in itself is staggering. Will the US investigation get access to it in your opinion?

No, probably not. China doesn't seem like it's going to cooperate with another investigation.

There are other ways to show a lab origin however, if claims of gain of function or manufacture are true.

If the claim is that the virus is completely natural and completely indistinguishable from a naturally occuring virus, then isn't that just the most likely explanation?

Dohnjoe

splashuum wrote: »

I’m having serious issues trying to comprehend peoples thinking. Imagine believing the virus occurred naturally in a wet market when coincidentally the biggest virology lab in China is a only few hundred metres down the road from it. You have to seriously wonder whether common sense gone has out the window?

Not hard to understand

The lab is located in Wuhan because it's at the epicenter of Coronavirus-carrying bat populations in China

1. Could the virus have been transferred (like the other viruses) zoonotically? That's a possibility, but they haven't found the direct or intermediate animal so it cannot be confirmed
2. Could they have been studying one of these viruses at the lab and it accidentally leaked? That's a possibility, but we don't have strong evidence for it
3. Is the virus man-made? The consensus of scientists who have examined the virus believe it's natural, not man-made.

So it's likely to be 1. natural origins, or 2. natural via lab-leak. It's not a football team, you don't have to "back one". We simply don't know for sure yet. Will see what the next investigation concludes (and it's unlikely they will have a conclusive answer as both are extremely hard to verify)

Unicorn Milk Latte

I believe it's important to have a more differentiated view than merely looking at nation states and governments.


There is a distinct difference in how politicians - regardless of nationality - operate, and how scientists operate.

For many politicians, hiding truths that impact their electability is second nature.

The way scientists operate is entirely different. They try to pursue truth. Not being thorough and truthful can damage a scientist's reputation - the opposite effect compared to politicians.


Chinese virologists have openly shared the genome of SARS-COV-2 as early as January 2nd 2020, regardless of politics. The motivation is international communication, and advancing knowledge. For Chinese scientists, finding the correct, verifiable origin is an unequivocally positive, useful thing, regardless of outcome.

Any hurdles come from small minded politicians on both sides - trying to point fingers, and avoid blame.

Mic 1972

Tenger wrote: »

I immediate dislike this source due to their use of the term "Mainstream Media" and "the Left".

sounds like you have a bias too ;-)

geospatial

Dohnjoe wrote: »

Not hard to understand
The lab is located in Wuhan because it's at the epicenter of Coronavirus-carrying bat populations in China

It isn't. There are populations in various parts of China, but the highest concentrations by far are in the southeast and southwest. The closest relative we know of to SARS-2 was collected in Yunnan in 2013. Yunnan appears to be the at least one epicenter of beta Cov carrying bats.

This is one of the main points made by those who argue for a lab origin, if the virus originated in Yunnan how did it get to Wuhan. Did it take the train or hitch a ride with a pangolin?

robinph

Mic 1972 wrote: »

Agreed
Also, there are very few labs in the world currently doing the type of virus research that is being done in Wuhan.
If the Wuhan lab had really nothing to do with the virus we would have been swamped with evidence of it

It's crazy how the main volcanic research in the US is centred around the areas that the most volcanoes are.

https://www.usgs.gov/natural-hazards/volcano-hazards/observatories

Clearly proves that they are responsible for the volcanic activity. Why not have that research conducted in MIT or something instead where there are actually more potential researchers studying, rather than in the frozen wastes of Alaska.

geospatial

King Mob wrote: »

I think that this causes a problem, especially in the more conspiracy minded than yourself.

If we imagine for a moment that the virus had a WIV lab origin and was a manipulated virus, I'm not sure we can trust any government to disclose it. It would be absolutely devastating to the research virology community and the broader scientific community.

There are at least five explanations on SARS-2 origin. 1. It evolved naturally within mammals like a pangolin and jumped to humans. 2. It jumped directly to humans from bats. 3. It evolved in a setting like a mink farm via cell passaging. 4. It evolved in a lab via cell passaging. 5. It is the result of research similar to other known research where elements from one virus are inserted into another.

All five are possible. 1. is most likely although 3. might explain how it evolved to be so well adapted to mammals.

Dohnjoe

geospatial wrote: »

It isn't. There are populations in various parts of China, but the highest concentrations by far are in the southeast and southwest. The closest relative we know of to SARS-2 was collected in Yunnan in 2013. Yunnan appears to be the at least one epicenter of beta Cov carrying bats.

It's specifically located in Wuhan because it's the central location between all those different bat populations

Here is a good explainer with graphics and overlaps of the bat populations (takes 30 seconds to watch)
https://youtu.be/P8OwCCFEslQ?t=124

Dohnjoe

geospatial wrote: »

If we imagine for a moment that the virus had a WIV lab origin and was a manipulated virus, I'm not sure we can trust any government to disclose it. It would be absolutely devastating to the research virology community and the broader scientific community.

There are at least five explanations on SARS-2 origin. 1. It evolved naturally within mammals like a pangolin and jumped to humans. 2. It jumped directly to humans from bats. 3. It evolved in a setting like a mink farm via cell passaging. 4. It evolved in a lab via cell passaging. 5. It is the result of research similar to other known research where elements from one virus are inserted into another.

All five are possible. 1. is most likely although 3. might explain how it evolved to be so well adapted to mammals.

4. and 5. are unlikely as the current scientific consensus is that the virus has not been manipulated in any way, i.e. that it's natural. The "man-made" theory is weak.

There is the three lads going to hospital then too..
That puts the lab theories in pole position I reckon..

It's brilliant how on absolutely every point there's immediately a rebuttal though, backed up with whatever..

Some are very into their arguing about conspiracy theories on the Internet..

robinph

geospatial wrote: »

If we imagine for a moment that the virus had a WIV lab origin and was a manipulated virus, I'm not sure we can trust any government to disclose it. It would be absolutely devastating to the research virology community and the broader scientific community.

There are at least five explanations on SARS-2 origin. 1. It evolved naturally within mammals like a pangolin and jumped to humans. 2. It jumped directly to humans from bats. 3. It evolved in a setting like a mink farm via cell passaging. 4. It evolved in a lab via cell passaging. 5. It is the result of research similar to other known research where elements from one virus are inserted into another.

All five are possible. 1. is most likely although 3. might explain how it evolved to be so well adapted to mammals.

That would require all scientist worldwide to be signed up to the same idea of keeping the secret and not wanting to risk giving their international colleagues a bad name. How many people would you think this need to be in on it to prevent the conspiracy from getting out?

Much like if the virus was released from a lab, or if it came from a bat, it only need one leak and it then soon spreads worldwide. If there was any basis for thinking there was a massive global conspiracy, it would only need one person with actual evidence of that and the conspiracy would come tumbling down.

As it it there is currently just some people with crazy ideas that they can't prove, or who then change their claims on a weekly basis when they misunderstand some new comment from someone or a new paper gets released about something that they don't understand.