5 ms·

Nice job uncovering the link to Bannon. In the abstract, aside from the claim of ‘censorship by the scientific community’, I thought this line was a red flag: *

Nice job uncovering the link to Bannon. In the abstract, aside from the claim of ‘censorship by the scientific community’, I thought this line was a red flag: * In this report, we describe the genomic, structural, medical, and literature evidence...* If they had decent scientific evidence, they’d be pounding on it. Instead it sounds like they’re trying to cobble together a story from bits of cherry-picked analysis.

jerome-jh 6y ago
If not censorship, there is self-censorship in the scientific community. Who wants to sacrifice its carrier, funding, link with chinese labs? Even if not told aloud or published, entire teams are intimately convinced the virus was released by the Wuhan BSL4, although not necessarily intentionally. I am not surprised only "politically motivated" scientists try to break that out. I am absolutely not in favor of Bannon either.
- Uberphallus 6y ago
  Actually, after going through the paper, most concerns seem to me like cherry picked data, except for the fact that Shi theoretically found the RaTG13 (the "origin" of SARS-CoV-2) in 2013. Even though it displayed potential for human infection and literally her job was to analyse bat coronaviruses with human infection potential, the virus was shelved for 7 years, and there's NO scientific literature, produced by her or otherwise, about this virus. Not until the pandemic arrived, at least, then she's the first to say "nCoV-2019 actually comes from the bat coronavirus RaTG13, look how similar they are, it's zoonotic, teeheehee".
  - dependenttypes 6y ago
    How true is this? I was under the impression that all of the coronaviruses were published in a public repository even before the outbreak started.
    - Uberphallus 6y ago
      It was only published along with her paper. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/MN996532 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/MN996532 (2020) Some quick google fu shows no hits before her paper, either for the virus name (RaTG13) or for chains of nucleotides. Then another point that seems suspicious to me is that, in her interview with Nature, she states that RaTG13 was only found in 1 (one) bat poop sample, as in, ever, and that all of the sample was used, so there's no virus isolate available, which is too convenient. Edit: It was previously called RaBtCoV/4991, and only a single gene was published in 2016. Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/983856042 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/983856042
  - jml7c5 6y ago
    Not that shocking. After nCoV-2019 was sequenced, the first thing they would do is compare it to all previously sequenced virus samples.
    - Uberphallus 6y ago
      The shocking part is that her lab never published that sequence contrary, to my knowledge, to common practice. Also the little research associated to it. Let's gloss over the whole thing: 1- In 2012 6 mine workers get infected with a SARS-like disease, test positive for SARS-specific antibodies, 3 die. 2- Shi is literally sent to that cave to research the bat coronaviruses there that might have had caused the illness. 3- Her team finds a plethora of viral samples of potentially zoonotic diseases. 4- Her team describes generic findings, no full sequences published whatsoever, no mention of the actual reason that motivated the study of that shaft. Fast forward to 2020 5- SARS-like disease arises, sequence matches 96% with one that potentially killed 3 miners that somehow wasn't really researched past basic findings.
- singemonkey 6y ago
  > Even if not told aloud or published, entire teams are intimately convinced the virus was released by the Wuhan BSL4, although not necessarily intentionally. Let's have some actual evidence of this please.
  - redis_mlc 6y ago
    > Let's have some actual evidence of this please. You likely will never get any hard evidence because: 1) The CCP scrubbed the lab and disappeared scientists who made notifications to health authorities 2) The Wuhan lab had strange activity in late 2019, with cell phone traffic dropping to zero in some areas (ie. sealed off.) 3) The corona sequence that was released to the public was actually unauthorized. The West got lucky with that. 4) The CCP doesn't like bad news or investigations. However there's 2 things that do make this look like a lab-directed event: 1) The CCP stopped internal air traffic from Wuhan, but not international. This fits the warfare doctrine of the CCP. 2) There's around 40 disease labs in China, with 3 in the Wuhan area. Despite sars-1 in 2003, no effort was made to find a cure, yet tons of work on gain of function (GoF) to weaponize corona virus, as published. I would like to see countries bill China $10 million per fatality or $1 million per chronic infection, and seize all foreign assets to pay for the pandemic. China has over 1,000 listings on US exchanges, and dozens of BRI and port facilities literally circling the globe.
  - jerome-jh 6y ago
    There is no evidence for the natural selection hypothesis either.
- roca 6y ago
  In the current environment, why would Western scientists be worried about funding issues if they prove the virus was manufactured in a Chinese lab? The US government would probably bombard them with money.
  - jerome-jh 6y ago
    Simply because: - they cannot formally prove there has been human manipulation of the virus, just like the proponents of natural selection cannot formally prove this is what happened. So as scientists, why argue publicly about that. - as your politically inclined comment suggests, they would be at the center of a political battle. Today every western lab is dependent on China for reagents. There's a big risk getting short on them. But the fact that only papers in favor of natural selection are being published in well-known scientific journals does not mean there is consensus. Maybe the scientific journals also suffer from "the Disney bias".
    - cloverich 6y ago
      First, I think you meant evolution. Natural selection is regularly, directly witnessed in all levels of life. Towards the more general argument -- in the absence of formal proof, we are left with selecting the most likely scenario. In this case, what is the reason to believe it was created in a lab as opposed through natural mechanisms? The latter is more likely unless some evidence suggests otherwise. If the only evidence thus far is from a non-reviewed journal w/ very obvious political motivations, then it likely continues to be the less likely scenario.
      - gridlockd 6y ago
        Why is the latter more likely? Gain of function experiments are performed regularly in labs, also on coronaviruses. Lab escapes have occured numerous times. Shi Zhengli herself suspected at first that it came from one of their labs, because Wuhan is so far from the bats that are the suspected original host.
      - jerome-jh 6y ago
- tensor 6y ago
  You obviously haven't interacted with many scientists. As a highly liberal group, they tend towards social justice. Telling them to cover something up is more likely to make them speak louder about it than actually stay quiet. Also, the vast majority of scientists get funding from their own country's government, not from China.

jerome-jh 6y ago

If not censorship, there is self-censorship in the scientific community. Who wants to sacrifice its carrier, funding, link with chinese labs? Even if not told aloud or published, entire teams are intimately convinced the virus was released by the Wuhan BSL4, although not necessarily intentionally. I am not surprised only "politically motivated" scientists try to break that out. I am absolutely not in favor of Bannon either.

Uberphallus 6y ago
Actually, after going through the paper, most concerns seem to me like cherry picked data, except for the fact that Shi theoretically found the RaTG13 (the "origin" of SARS-CoV-2) in 2013. Even though it displayed potential for human infection and literally her job was to analyse bat coronaviruses with human infection potential, the virus was shelved for 7 years, and there's NO scientific literature, produced by her or otherwise, about this virus. Not until the pandemic arrived, at least, then she's the first to say "nCoV-2019 actually comes from the bat coronavirus RaTG13, look how similar they are, it's zoonotic, teeheehee".
- dependenttypes 6y ago
  How true is this? I was under the impression that all of the coronaviruses were published in a public repository even before the outbreak started.
  - Uberphallus 6y ago
    It was only published along with her paper. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/MN996532 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/MN996532 (2020) Some quick google fu shows no hits before her paper, either for the virus name (RaTG13) or for chains of nucleotides. Then another point that seems suspicious to me is that, in her interview with Nature, she states that RaTG13 was only found in 1 (one) bat poop sample, as in, ever, and that all of the sample was used, so there's no virus isolate available, which is too convenient. Edit: It was previously called RaBtCoV/4991, and only a single gene was published in 2016. Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/983856042 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/983856042
- jml7c5 6y ago
  Not that shocking. After nCoV-2019 was sequenced, the first thing they would do is compare it to all previously sequenced virus samples.
  - Uberphallus 6y ago
    The shocking part is that her lab never published that sequence contrary, to my knowledge, to common practice. Also the little research associated to it. Let's gloss over the whole thing: 1- In 2012 6 mine workers get infected with a SARS-like disease, test positive for SARS-specific antibodies, 3 die. 2- Shi is literally sent to that cave to research the bat coronaviruses there that might have had caused the illness. 3- Her team finds a plethora of viral samples of potentially zoonotic diseases. 4- Her team describes generic findings, no full sequences published whatsoever, no mention of the actual reason that motivated the study of that shaft. Fast forward to 2020 5- SARS-like disease arises, sequence matches 96% with one that potentially killed 3 miners that somehow wasn't really researched past basic findings.
singemonkey 6y ago
> Even if not told aloud or published, entire teams are intimately convinced the virus was released by the Wuhan BSL4, although not necessarily intentionally. Let's have some actual evidence of this please.
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  > Let's have some actual evidence of this please. You likely will never get any hard evidence because: 1) The CCP scrubbed the lab and disappeared scientists who made notifications to health authorities 2) The Wuhan lab had strange activity in late 2019, with cell phone traffic dropping to zero in some areas (ie. sealed off.) 3) The corona sequence that was released to the public was actually unauthorized. The West got lucky with that. 4) The CCP doesn't like bad news or investigations. However there's 2 things that do make this look like a lab-directed event: 1) The CCP stopped internal air traffic from Wuhan, but not international. This fits the warfare doctrine of the CCP. 2) There's around 40 disease labs in China, with 3 in the Wuhan area. Despite sars-1 in 2003, no effort was made to find a cure, yet tons of work on gain of function (GoF) to weaponize corona virus, as published. I would like to see countries bill China $10 million per fatality or $1 million per chronic infection, and seize all foreign assets to pay for the pandemic. China has over 1,000 listings on US exchanges, and dozens of BRI and port facilities literally circling the globe.
- jerome-jh 6y ago
  There is no evidence for the natural selection hypothesis either.
roca 6y ago
In the current environment, why would Western scientists be worried about funding issues if they prove the virus was manufactured in a Chinese lab? The US government would probably bombard them with money.
- jerome-jh 6y ago
  Simply because: - they cannot formally prove there has been human manipulation of the virus, just like the proponents of natural selection cannot formally prove this is what happened. So as scientists, why argue publicly about that. - as your politically inclined comment suggests, they would be at the center of a political battle. Today every western lab is dependent on China for reagents. There's a big risk getting short on them. But the fact that only papers in favor of natural selection are being published in well-known scientific journals does not mean there is consensus. Maybe the scientific journals also suffer from "the Disney bias".
  - cloverich 6y ago
    First, I think you meant evolution. Natural selection is regularly, directly witnessed in all levels of life. Towards the more general argument -- in the absence of formal proof, we are left with selecting the most likely scenario. In this case, what is the reason to believe it was created in a lab as opposed through natural mechanisms? The latter is more likely unless some evidence suggests otherwise. If the only evidence thus far is from a non-reviewed journal w/ very obvious political motivations, then it likely continues to be the less likely scenario.
    - gridlockd 6y ago
      Why is the latter more likely? Gain of function experiments are performed regularly in labs, also on coronaviruses. Lab escapes have occured numerous times. Shi Zhengli herself suspected at first that it came from one of their labs, because Wuhan is so far from the bats that are the suspected original host.
    - jerome-jh 6y ago
tensor 6y ago
You obviously haven't interacted with many scientists. As a highly liberal group, they tend towards social justice. Telling them to cover something up is more likely to make them speak louder about it than actually stay quiet. Also, the vast majority of scientists get funding from their own country's government, not from China.