Covid-19 likely to be man made

Mic 1972

astrofool wrote: »

b) the absence of evidence is evidence that they made it up, as you have already conceded, there is not one shred of evidence available to back up the man made assertion

that's plain wrong


Absense of evidence may be due to other reasons


a) evidence hasnt been found so far
b) evidence has been concealed/removed and may never be found
c) a proper investigation hasn't been carried out
d) other

Trump pointed to the Wuhan lab leak right away because it was the most plausible option and probably he wasnt far from the truth

Igotadose

Absence of evidence is NEVER evidence of absence. Basic logic there, something missing badly from the CT universe though.

Nor can you prove a negative.

astrofool

Mic 1972 wrote: »

that's plain wrong


Absense of evidence may be due to other reasons


a) evidence hasnt been found so far
b) evidence has been concealed/removed and may never be found
c) a proper investigation hasn't been carried out
d) other

Trump pointed to the Wuhan lab leak right away because it was the most plausible option and probably he wasnt far from the truth

You're asking me to prove absence of evidence, the absence of a single shred of evidence as admitted by yourself is the proof of that lack of evidence.

We're not even talking about some evidence that requires further investigation, there is 0.

trump tried to blame China because he's a xenophobe and was trying to deflect attention from his utter incompetence, there is mountains of evidence of this, even Fauci, who for some reason all the trumpeters are now lauding as their savior on this, completely disagreed with basically everything he did around COVID with trump publicly disparaging him multiple times and making multiple threats to fire him.

Mic 1972 wrote: »

There is no evidence and i never said there was.
Stop asking for links to things I haven't said

King Mob

King Mob wrote: »

Not really. A lot of folks here are saying "Aha, Trump was right! Take that doubters!"

We're just asking how people know that he was actually right and basing his claims on evidence he actually had. How do people know that it wasn't just another lie (from a long list) that happened to get lucky.

You're getting into conspiracy theory yourself now..

They had the evidence we've seen since..According to Pompeo there's more that should come out too..

astrofool

Deleted User wrote: »

You're getting into conspiracy theory yourself now..

They had the evidence we've seen since..According to Pompeo there's more that should come out too..

C'Mon CQD, one single shred of evidence, maybe you're up to it, prove the thousands of researchers and virologists wrong.

And maybe you can give your explanation of what science is as well instead of running away again.

King Mob

Deleted User wrote: »

You're getting into conspiracy theory yourself now..

That a serial liar told a lie?
That's not exactly a far out idea.

Deleted User wrote: »

They had the evidence we've seen since...

Ok. How do you know this?

geospatial

astrofool wrote: »

b) the absence of evidence is evidence that they made it up, as you have already conceded, there is not one shred of evidence available to back up the man made assertion

There is claimed evidence of a lab leak, the claim from the US government that researchers at the WIV were hospitalized with Covid like or flu like symptoms in the autumn of 2019. This is presumably why Fauci is now asking for medical records of those researchers, to rule in or rule out that they had Covid. What we do not know is when did US intelligence learn this information.

There is no direct evidence that SARS-2 was a manipulated virus, just as there is no direct evidence that it is zootonic. There is circumstantial evidence that it is zootonic and there is circumstantial evidence that it was manipulated. Some of the circumstantial evidence that it could have been manipulated is in the US fact sheet (the reference to RaTG13 and gain of function research).

patnor1011

patnor1011 wrote: »

Yes, I have seen this bizarre argument about competing countries and "all of the countries and scientists" colluding in some conspiracy... You fail to see that governments for the most part are comprised of career politicians and many times like in our example even sons and daughters of politicians who think that they do have some qualification to "rule" just because their daddy used to be politician. They absolutely rely on outside financing or donations in order to mount successful campaign to secure that job. It then comes down to a handful of companies or corporations which then do have power to influence elections, policies and even science by the sheer power of deciding where their money will flow.
People should really stop talking about scientists like they are some bunch of holy deities. Some posters here love to use the term "scientific consensus" as if that was something set in stone. Guess what? Climate movement which started many decades ago to this day could not get it right despite many scientific consensuses about global cooling, then warming, then cooling again till they rebranded it to fantastic "climate change" argument so that whatever happens it will be right on with the plan.

Your global conspiracy impossibility argument do have big holes in it. If you take just our example that despite a lot of talk, shouting and beating around bushes it is just one person in Ireland who is deciding policies and we all know who it is. So if there is a global conspiracy, all they needed to make Ireland to follow up is to get that one person on board. The same thing happened in many more countries and in other countries politicians just followed example of neighbors or bigger countries simply because they did not know better. Some outliers like Sweden which did not conform to "consensus" had everything but a kitchen sink thrown at them till they fall in line.

Who's that then?

astrofool

geospatial wrote: »

There is claimed evidence of a lab leak, the claim from the US government that researchers at the WIV were hospitalized with Covid like or flu like symptoms in the autumn of 2019. This is presumably why Fauci is now asking for medical records of those researchers, to rule in or rule out that they had Covid. What we do not know is when did US intelligence learn this information.

There is no direct evidence that SARS-2 was a manipulated virus, just as there is no direct evidence that it is zootonic. There is circumstantial evidence that it is zootonic and there is circumstantial evidence that it was manipulated. Some of the circumstantial evidence that it could have been manipulated is in the US fact sheet (the reference to RaTG13 and gain of function research).

There is direct evidence of it's zoonotic origin, both the previous similar virus and the similar structures of the virus to already existing virus, for it to have been man made would require very advanced manipulation that was effectively able to hide that manipulation from all other researchers which would be a conspiracy (with no clear motive). I've no doubt GOF research is happening, but nothing in SARS-COV2 would support that claim.

For the evidence, we know that trump would have been shouting it from the roof tops if he had any (he tried anyway), he shouted about evidence of voter fraud that was proven multiple times to not exist after multiple audits by his own party. I'd be surprised if this latest investigation did anything other than rubber stamp the previous investigation but have a bit more detail tailored for an American audience.

geospatial

astrofool wrote: »

There is direct evidence of it's zoonotic origin, both the previous similar virus and the similar structures of the virus to already existing virus, for it to have been man made would require very advanced manipulation that was effectively able to hide that manipulation from all other researchers which would be a conspiracy (with no clear motive). I've no doubt GOF research is happening, but nothing in SARS-COV2 would support that claim.

Direct evidence of zoontonic origin would be finding an animal with a precursor to SARS-2 that would be very similar genomically, as was done with SARS-1 (civet cats) and MERS (camels). The only claim of finding such a source were one batch of smuggled pangolins in early 2020, the virus they were infected with was SARS-2 so they possibly got infected by humans. Hundreds of pangolins have been tested since then and all tested negative, so pangolins are now thought to be unlikely as the source. We know human to animal transmission is not just possible but highly likely, mink farms in Denmark for example. SARS-2 is well adapted to infect a wide range of mammals, ferrets and minks are as susceptible as humans.

Similarity to other viruses is circumstantial evidence, it's evidence that the virus started as a bat coronavirus. SARS-2 is actually not that similar to SARS-1, it shares 79.5% of it's genome. All we can say for certain is SARS-2 is a betacoronavirus that almost certainly originally came from a horseshoe bat. We do know of one virus that is quite similar though, RaTG13 which was collected by WIV researchers in Yunnan in 2013 along with 8 other similar bat coronaviruses, it's genome is 96.1% similar. The fact that the WIV tried to cover up that they had sequenced this virus years ago and only admitted it when proof was presented to them is suspicious. The only "man made" hypothesis that really has any weight is that SARS-2 evolved from this virus or a similar virus in the WIV, either in humans, or from passaging or splicing experiments, and leaked from the lab.

It is incorrect to say that it would require very advanced manipulation to get from an RaTG13 or similar virus to SARS-2 and this would be obvious to researchers. Passaging in a lab would look no different to passaging in nature, and inserting sequences from one virus into another would also leave no traces. That's what gain of function experiments do, essentially mimicking nature, recombination for example.

You do know I assume there are now several researchers who have openly said manipulation that resulted in SARS-2 is quite possible, these are credible scientists not cranks. Some of them have gone so far as to suggest the genomic evidence supports manipulation more than natural origin. The consensus that was established in early February 2020 on natural origin and ruling out a lab leak appears to have collapsed.

Anyone truly interested in this topic has to ask themselves the question why is Fauci asking for the medical records from miners who fell ill after working in a mine in Yunnan in 2012. Why would he ask China about a conspiracy theory?

geospatial

So now it appears there was a report from May of 2020 from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory warning that the Covid-19 virus could have leaked from a lab. It was classified as top secret and not shared broadly with Congress.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/07/politics/covid-lab-leak-theory-classified-report/index.html

patnor1011

Not only that, evidence of zoonotic origin simply do not exist, there are only possible scenarios offered of how it could have happened. (contrary to astrofool constantly claiming that we have some)
Also talk type "this is not how science is working" is funny considering what is coming out from released emails and little investigative work.
Say, for example how esteemed Kristian G. Anderson who in February contacted Fauci with concerns about how he and his team found evidence of gain of function manipulation of virus then had a change of heart after some chat and well, after some nice grant money came his way. And now since zoonotic transmission is not the only gig in town he had a little change of heart again and nuked his whole twitter.

More and more scientists coming out as they now do not need to be afraid of losing funding or career if they try to employ science and not simply adhere to "consensus" or better said politics.
Now apparently the science suggest Wuhan lab leak. Well according to scientists and Wall Street Journal.

The Science Suggests a Wuhan Lab Leak
The Covid-19 pathogen has a genetic footprint that has never been observed in a natural coronavirus.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-science-suggests-a-wuhan-lab-leak-11622995184


A little summary:
*********************
Dr. Stephen Quay and Berkeley physics professor Richard Muller revealed the findings in The Wall Street Journal Sunday, noting that “The most compelling reason to favor the lab leak hypothesis is firmly based in science.”

The scientists added that “COVID-19 has a genetic footprint that has never been observed in a natural coronavirus.”

The research points to the genome sequencing of the virus ‘CGG-CGG’, which is one of 36 sequencing patterns observed, but does not occur in nature.

“The CGG-CGG combination has never been found naturally. That means the common method of viruses picking up new skills, called recombination, cannot operate here,” the scientists assert.

“A virus simply cannot pick up a sequence from another virus if that sequence isn’t present in any other virus,” they add, while also noting that the CGG-CGG combination IS commonly used in ‘gain of function’ research, which is known to have been used with coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

The scientists urge that those who believe COVID-19 jumped from animals to humans “must explain why it happened to pick its least favorite combination: CGG-CGG.”

They further ask for an explanation as to “Why did it replicate the choice the lab’s gain-of-function researchers would have made?”

“Yes, it could have happened randomly, through mutations. But do you believe that?” the authors of the study ask, adding “At the minimum, this fact—that the coronavirus, with all its random possibilities, took the rare and unnatural combination used by human researchers—implies that the leading theory for the origin of the coronavirus must be laboratory escape.”

This latest study comes on the heels of a revitalised focus on scientific research by Professor Angus Dalgleish of St George’s Hospital, University of London and Norwegian virologist Birger Sorensen which presents compelling evidence suggesting the virus was manufactured in a laboratory.

As the scientists noted, they were ostracised and ignored until recently when intelligence findings revealed that workers at the Wuhan lab fell sick with COVID-19 symptoms in November 2019.

As the global pandemic unfolded, scores of scientists came forward suggesting the genome sequencing of the virus was unnatural, and should be further investigated. The lab leak theory was effectively shut down, however, when scientists led by Dr Peter Daszak “orchestrated a ‘bullying’ campaign and coerced top scientists into signing off on a letter to The Lancet journal aimed at removing blame for Covid-19 from the Wuhan lab he was funding with US money.”

Daszak, who keeps appearing as the lead figure in investigations of the research he funded with US grant money via his own organisation, reportedly used his influence to get The Lancet to publish the letter, which stated that to even suggest the lab leak theory had any credibility was equal to spreading “fear, rumours, and prejudice.”

The release of Dr Fauci’s emails has also reconfirmed that Fauci was discussing the lab leak scenario with other scientists, and knew full well that it was a distinct possibility, despite making statements to the contrary in public, before any robust scientific research into the matter had been carried out.

****************
I do not care if it is Chinese, American, Russian or any other country lab. Problem is that research like this is done behind closed doors without proper precautions and proper overseeing. The only thing positive in this whole mess is that this virus thankfully is far from what models predicted over a year ago but still I have no doubt that some "scientists" are even now engaged in similar research and possibly creating something 100x worse than this current virus.

geospatial

patnor1011 wrote: »

Say, for example how esteemed Kristian G. Anderson who in February contacted Fauci with concerns about how he and his team found evidence of gain of function manipulation of virus then had a change of heart after some chat and well, after some nice grant money came his way. And now since zoonotic transmission is not the only gig in town he had a little change of heart again and nuked his whole twitter.

The Anderson paper is interesting because literally everyone who claims it "proves" natural origin and excludes lab leak references it. It's the paper most quoted on this thread and the paper quoted by most media in early 2020, and still quoted by many today.

It doesn't prove anything, it's an opinion piece not a research paper. The two claims it makes to exclude manipulation are extremely questionable. The first claim is that the virus is not optimally for binding to a human ACE2 cell and if it were engineered it would be optimal. This is nonsense, if you were building a virus from scratch or trying to make a bioweapon it might be true, but that's not what these labs are doing. They are trying to add functionality to existing coronaviruses to see if they will better infect humans, they are not trying to make the perfect virus. The techniques they use are passaging and gene splicing of existing virus segments, these by definition would not be optimal.

The second claim is that if there had been manipulation the backbone used in the virus would be known, as in already published. But this is also nonsense, the WIV have collected hundreds of coronaviruses and we have no idea how many they have sequenced and not published. For example RaTG13 could be the backbone or one of the other 8 similar viruses that were collected in Yunnan in 2013 or others collected since. This was dismissed by Peter Daszak who said they never sequenced RaTG13 prior to 2020, until it was pointed out that not alone had they but they admitted it, and he then said he was "misinformed". This is the same guy who during the WHO investigation in Feb 2021 said there was no need to look at their data because he already knew everything they were doing.

The biggest issue with the article though is the statement right at the beginning "our analysis clearly shows that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus". No credible scientist would make such a strong claim so early and with so little information. Two weeks after writing to say it looked engineered, and he now says he was initially mistaken. Having said that he doesn't deserve some of the attacks coming his way, like advice to get lawyered up. It looks more likely that he was pressured after writing his email to Fauci and his letter to Nature magazine was in response to pressure.

https://nypost.com/2021/06/06/scientists-were-pushing-real-covid-19-conspiracy-devine/

gormdubhgorm

Any real evidence come to light yet to prove any theory of a covid19 conspiracy? Personally I would like to blame Meath or Kerry. If someone could point to some Meath or Kerry Covid19 conspiracy I wouldn't be surprised at all. 'Typical!' I would say!

Sure isn't Sean Boylan into creating all sorts of home made potions, and Paidi O'Sé believed in piseógs and fairy forts. No smoke without fire I say!

I'd imagine a kerry variant would be pretty bad..

Although calling it a kerry variant is probably racist..

ClosedAccountFuzzy

What raises suspicion for me is the lack of cooperation on the investigation. I know there’s a culture of control, cover up and attributing blame in many structures in organisations that are managed top down. You see it in authoritarian governments and you see it in private organisations that put reputation ahead of all else.

A failure might be punished instead of investigated and learned from. This was very true in the Soviet system and is what created the circumstances for the Chernobyl disaster, for example.

It could simply be a face saving issue, but from an outside perspective it looks and smells like there’s something been hidden, otherwise the investigation led by the WHO would have been more open & there would have been an openness to bringing in other countries’ experts and working openly and transparently in to figure out what happened.

Instead we had a PR drive, often a rather crude one and a closing out of anyone investigating.

The whole thing is also mired in Trump administration side swipes at China and the WHO, which didn’t really engender an atmosphere of helpful cooperation and transparency either. The US was hardly (and probably still isn’t) a neutral or helpful partner in an investigation if you’re looking from China’s point of view.

I mean if you were a Chinese official, would you want a Trump driven team involved?! You’d want to be off your rocker!

It’s somewhere some of the European countries might be able to offer more neutral perspective tbh.

Whether there’s fire creating the smoke is another question, but there’s certainly plenty of smoke.

In a more sane international relations environment, say a decade or more ago, I think this would have been much less problematic. We’d have had answers and far less suspicion and hot air by now.

Timberrrrrrrr

[Deleted User] wrote: »

https://nypost.com/2021/06/06/scientists-were-pushing-real-covid-19-conspiracy-devine/

Oh look, another link dump of an opinion piece with no context of thier own to add :rolleyes:

Mullaghteelin

Timberrrrrrrr wrote: »

Oh look, another link dump of an opinion piece with no context of thier own to add :rolleyes:

If posters constantly demand links from reputable sources, why criticize when such links are provided?
You can bring a horse to water but you cannot make it drink.
Or, there are none as blind as those who refuse to see

Mic 1972

Mullaghteelin wrote: »

If posters constantly demand links from reputable sources, why criticize when such links are provided?
You can bring a horse to water but you cannot make it drink.
Or, there are none as blind as those who refuse to see

Can we frame this post?

[Deleted User]

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Although calling it a kerry variant is probably racist..

It would definitely be of zoonotic origin, traced back to some lad interfering with a sheep..

Igotadose

Mullaghteelin wrote: »

If posters constantly demand links from reputable sources, why criticize when such links are provided?
You can bring a horse to water but you cannot make it drink.
Or, there are none as blind as those who refuse to see

NY post? Reputable? Pull the other one

Mic 1972

astrofool wrote: »

trump tried to blame China because he's a xenophobe and was trying to deflect attention from his utter incompetence, there is mountains of evidence of this, even Fauci, who for some reason all the trumpeters are now lauding as their savior on this, completely disagreed with basically everything he did around COVID with trump publicly disparaging him multiple times and making multiple threats to fire him.

The mere fact that you have a strong bias against Trump and are making this all about politics is enough evidence that you are not open to any truth. That's what makes your arguments so empty

Timberrrrrrrr

Mullaghteelin wrote: »

If posters constantly demand links from reputable sources, why criticize when such links are provided?
You can bring a horse to water but you cannot make it drink.
Or, there are none as blind as those who refuse to see

How is an opinion piece considered to be a reputable source?

Igotadose

Deleted User wrote: »

It would definitely be of zoonotic origin, traced back to some lad interfering with a sheep..

Hilarious. Are you here all week?

Timberrrrrrrr

Mic 1972 wrote: »

Can we frame this post?

So you're saying that opinion pieces should be taken seriously? And it's OK to just dump a link to an opinion piece as some sort of "see!!!...look!!!" Moment? :rolleyes:

jackboy

Deleted User wrote: »

https://nypost.com/2021/06/06/scientists-were-pushing-real-covid-19-conspiracy-devine/

This is a problem which has got worse over time, the mixing of science and politics. Anytime you see a report that a bunch of scientists have signed a letter about whatever, ignore it, that is just a politics and likely someone went to the scientists and ‘encouraged’ them to sign.

Igotadose

jackboy wrote: »

This is a problem which has got worse over time, the mixing of science and politics. Anytime you see a report that a bunch of scientists have signed a letter about whatever, ignore it, that is just a politics and likely someone went to the scientists and ‘encouraged’ them to sign.

Miranda Devine is a nutter working for Murdoch. Her 'editorials' are just crap bottom feeding junk for the Post, which is Murdoch's 'all fear all the time' flagship, with boobs (page 6.) Basically, the Sun for NYC.

Though, the Sports section is o.k. if you are a fan of NY sports teams (as I am.)

I wouldn't trust anything coming out of that editorial board, especially Devine.

A couple of her other headlines:

"It's been a year of Antifa and unchecked anarchy"
"Nancy Pelosi doesn’t care about the truth"

Since Steve Dunleavy died, Murdoch needed someone from Oz to write incendiary nonsense. Cue Miranda Devine (yakkiting about US politics from Sydney.)

Igotadose

Igotadose wrote: »

Hilarious. Are you here all week?

Oooohhh...
We have someone from kerry in the audience..