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The rest of the comment is the same exact meritless insinuation I've replied to 100 other times in this thread. It's tiring replying to people who don't underst

The rest of the comment is the same exact meritless insinuation I've replied to 100 other times in this thread. It's tiring replying to people who don't understand the first thing about biology or virology because you have to retrace so much ground just to get them to the point where they can comprehend why they're 'not even wrong'. But sure, I'll bite. Aside from the completely false claim there aren't horseshoe bats near Wuhan. A small grant (only $1.5M was ever paid) to a lab studying coronaviruses after a huge coronavirus outbreak (SARS) isn't remotely interesting and especially isn't evidence of a lab leak. And the "human subjects" was literally just to run PCRs on people who live near bats to try and catch viruses early. More to the point, it's not difficult to see whether a virus was engineered or manipulated with GoF research and this one wasn't. So all of the silly distractions about right-wing bogeyman like Peter Daszak secretly funding Chinese bioweapons are irrelevant.

trhway 4y ago
- dang 4y ago
  Could you please make your substantive points without name-calling and swipes? It's against the site guidelines. It's also not in your interest, since it weakens your case. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - trhway 4y ago
    thank you, i appreciate it, overwatching Big Brother :) Sometimes one just gets carried away.
trhway 4y ago
>A small grant ... isn't evidence of a lab leak The grant is evidence of research not of the leak. >And the "human subjects" was literally just to run PCRs on people who live near bats to try and catch viruses early. we don't really know what was done with the "subjects". The IRB document would probably be a good starting point here. When you're doing GoF by specifically increasing human targeting virality by creating chimera viruses in the lab, the "PCRs on people who live near bats" sounds a bit sideway. > it's not difficult to see whether a virus was engineered or manipulated with GoF research and this one wasn't. really depends on how GoF is done. So far such conclusions in this case came from the people coopted and prompted by Daszak while those people weren't aware of the conflict of interest that Daszak has here. >So all of the silly distractions about right-wing bogeyman like Peter Daszak secretly funding Chinese bioweapons are irrelevant. that is strawman argument. The facts of Daszak involvement is clearly and widely documented. As to his motivation or final target - it is clearly a matter of interpretation and scale of fantasy of the one doing interpretation, and as i already mentioned in Russia for example, where fantasy these days runs amok and political interests are very specifically directed, it is interpreted in the opposite direction - as US building bioweapons. (Note: in my interpretation i see no bioweapons or the likes, just a somewhat dangerous research performed with a bit of corner cutting (not necessary for the reason of costs, as the speed of research at lower BSL also improves a lot), and instead of looking into the mistakes and how to make such research safer - i think such research is unavoidable - the issue got highly politicized with no any useful outcome as a result)

trhway 4y ago

dang 4y ago
Could you please make your substantive points without name-calling and swipes? It's against the site guidelines. It's also not in your interest, since it weakens your case. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- trhway 4y ago
  thank you, i appreciate it, overwatching Big Brother :) Sometimes one just gets carried away.

trhway 4y ago

>A small grant ... isn't evidence of a lab leak The grant is evidence of research not of the leak. >And the "human subjects" was literally just to run PCRs on people who live near bats to try and catch viruses early. we don't really know what was done with the "subjects". The IRB document would probably be a good starting point here. When you're doing GoF by specifically increasing human targeting virality by creating chimera viruses in the lab, the "PCRs on people who live near bats" sounds a bit sideway. > it's not difficult to see whether a virus was engineered or manipulated with GoF research and this one wasn't. really depends on how GoF is done. So far such conclusions in this case came from the people coopted and prompted by Daszak while those people weren't aware of the conflict of interest that Daszak has here. >So all of the silly distractions about right-wing bogeyman like Peter Daszak secretly funding Chinese bioweapons are irrelevant. that is strawman argument. The facts of Daszak involvement is clearly and widely documented. As to his motivation or final target - it is clearly a matter of interpretation and scale of fantasy of the one doing interpretation, and as i already mentioned in Russia for example, where fantasy these days runs amok and political interests are very specifically directed, it is interpreted in the opposite direction - as US building bioweapons. (Note: in my interpretation i see no bioweapons or the likes, just a somewhat dangerous research performed with a bit of corner cutting (not necessary for the reason of costs, as the speed of research at lower BSL also improves a lot), and instead of looking into the mistakes and how to make such research safer - i think such research is unavoidable - the issue got highly politicized with no any useful outcome as a result)