5 ms·

If we look at final report of Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic: COVID-19 ORIGIN: COVID-19 most likely emerged from a laboratory in Wuhan, China.

If we look at final report of Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic: COVID-19 ORIGIN: COVID-19 most likely emerged from a laboratory in Wuhan, China. The FIVE strongest arguments in favor of the “lab leak” theory include: 1) The virus possesses a biological characteristic that is not found in nature. Yes. 2) Data shows that all COVID-19 cases stem from a single introduction into humans. This runs contrary to previous pandemics where there were multiple spillover events. Yes. 3) Wuhan is home to China’s foremost SARS research lab, which has a history of conducting gain-of-function research at inadequate biosafety levels. Other biolabs can match this description too. 4) Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) researchers were sick with a COVID-like virus in the fall of 2019, months before COVID-19 was discovered at the wet market. Covid-like virus is not a Covid-19. 5) By nearly all measures of science, if there was evidence of a natural origin it would have already surfaced. Yes. So, yes, it realy looks like a leak from a biolab or a deliberate spreading of the virus in preparation to a war or a trade war.

alex1138 2y ago
Right and it's not necessarily a causal relationship between that and censorship, but ONCE you see how coordinated it was, it starts looking like part of a bigger effort (David Martin for example has talked about some of this) Otherwise I might not be so gung ho about it. I would have accepted "sorry, it got out, it's our fault". Accidents happen, but not when you coerce, censor, and make illegal (certain early treatment drugs) tools in the toolkit to fight the virus
thr3000 2y ago
[dead]
__MatrixMan__ 2y ago
I think many of those points are pretty flimsy. But even if they weren't I don't know how you get to your conclusion. That part of the world has a biolab doing gain of function research on that kind of virus because that part of the world has had problems with that kind of virus in the past. It receives finding from other countries because now that we know the source of the threat it makes sense to study it on the correct side of the world. Zoonotic diseases are ecosystems' hedge against diversity loss and Chinas rapid growth in the last 50y has put a strain on local species such that it has activated twice before. They'd be negligent not to be attempting to prepare for a third event. Maybe they went too far in their strategy, maybe they screwed up in their containment practices, but 99-100% of this this is a nature-made weapon. Maybe a lab managed to carve their initials into it somewhere. But we're never going to get good information about whether that's the case. Yet we're still all amped about that maybe-1% even though there's a lot of other things we could learn from here--things which nobody has any reason to spread misinformation about, and which could prevent a lot of hardship.
- oneshtein 2y ago
  I cited the US congress commission report[1]. It further explained in full report[2]. In short: 1) WIV proposed to modify CoV virus to infect humans in same way as SARS CoV2 using BSL-2 lab to save costs (see screenshot). BSL-2 means that protective masks are not required. 2) No such variation of CoV virus is found in nature. 3) Paper written by Dr. Baric and Dr. Shi which describes how to perform that insertion of furin cleavage sites into SARS CoV. So, arguments in favor of accidental leak from Chines WIH lab are strong. However, I'm biased against Russia (it saves lot of time), so I see few more arguments in favor of accidental leak from Chinese «Vector» lab in Koltsevo (Novosibirsk), which then transferred to Wuhan by Wuhan military police after shared military training with Russian military police in Koltsevo, because «Vector» BSL-4 lab had major incident (small bang and fire which broke windows, then doors are broken and equipment is stolen by Russian military looking for a fire) few weeks before that training. Paper with instructions was published, so it was open knowledge, so Russians may tried to reproduce it in preparation to the war. [1]: https://oversight.house.gov/release/final-report-covid-select-concludes-2-year-investigation-issues-500-page-final-report-on-lessons-learned-and-the-path-forward/ https://oversight.house.gov/release/final-report-covid-selec... [2]: https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/2024.12.04-SSCP-FINAL-REPORT-ANS.pdf https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/2024.... [3]: https://meduza.io/en/news/2024/12/19/trump-s-ukraine-envoy-nominee-keith-kellogg-says-assassination-of-russian-general-igor-kirillov-was-not-a-good-idea-at-all https://meduza.io/en/news/2024/12/19/trump-s-ukraine-envoy-n...
  - __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
    The trouble with the "not found in nature" business is that we have found far less than 1% of of the viral features that exist in nature. If you go pick a random subset of a randomly selected viral genome and determine its function, you're virtually guaranteed to have found something in nature which--until then--was not found in nature. We only bother doing that kind of research after a virus has started making people sick because it's expensive. It's called a spillover event and not a spillover status quo because it's new to us. To argue that it's manmade because we didn't see it coming is a gross overestimation of man's ability to make such things and of his ability to anticipate them. Even if we can glue things together that we found in nature, the threatening part is not the glue. The rest appears to be politics and has no bearing on what science might learn from COVID. Especially the first link, which reads more like a bunch of people patting their boss on the back in hopes that they don't get fired and nothing like the result of any kind of research. Nevermind their conflict of interest, what would congresspeople know about it in the first place? Some may release viruses of surprising structure on purpose or by accident, and nature does it also. That makes it relevant to understand ways to prevent and mitigate the impact of such events, but the nationalities of the people involved just doesn't impact the science in any way. I would be interested in reading the paper about the furin cleavage. Are you sure your link 3 is going to the right place?
deleted 2y ago

alex1138 2y ago

Right and it's not necessarily a causal relationship between that and censorship, but ONCE you see how coordinated it was, it starts looking like part of a bigger effort (David Martin for example has talked about some of this) Otherwise I might not be so gung ho about it. I would have accepted "sorry, it got out, it's our fault". Accidents happen, but not when you coerce, censor, and make illegal (certain early treatment drugs) tools in the toolkit to fight the virus

thr3000 2y ago

[dead]

__MatrixMan__ 2y ago

I think many of those points are pretty flimsy. But even if they weren't I don't know how you get to your conclusion. That part of the world has a biolab doing gain of function research on that kind of virus because that part of the world has had problems with that kind of virus in the past. It receives finding from other countries because now that we know the source of the threat it makes sense to study it on the correct side of the world. Zoonotic diseases are ecosystems' hedge against diversity loss and Chinas rapid growth in the last 50y has put a strain on local species such that it has activated twice before. They'd be negligent not to be attempting to prepare for a third event. Maybe they went too far in their strategy, maybe they screwed up in their containment practices, but 99-100% of this this is a nature-made weapon. Maybe a lab managed to carve their initials into it somewhere. But we're never going to get good information about whether that's the case. Yet we're still all amped about that maybe-1% even though there's a lot of other things we could learn from here--things which nobody has any reason to spread misinformation about, and which could prevent a lot of hardship.

oneshtein 2y ago
I cited the US congress commission report[1]. It further explained in full report[2]. In short: 1) WIV proposed to modify CoV virus to infect humans in same way as SARS CoV2 using BSL-2 lab to save costs (see screenshot). BSL-2 means that protective masks are not required. 2) No such variation of CoV virus is found in nature. 3) Paper written by Dr. Baric and Dr. Shi which describes how to perform that insertion of furin cleavage sites into SARS CoV. So, arguments in favor of accidental leak from Chines WIH lab are strong. However, I'm biased against Russia (it saves lot of time), so I see few more arguments in favor of accidental leak from Chinese «Vector» lab in Koltsevo (Novosibirsk), which then transferred to Wuhan by Wuhan military police after shared military training with Russian military police in Koltsevo, because «Vector» BSL-4 lab had major incident (small bang and fire which broke windows, then doors are broken and equipment is stolen by Russian military looking for a fire) few weeks before that training. Paper with instructions was published, so it was open knowledge, so Russians may tried to reproduce it in preparation to the war. [1]: https://oversight.house.gov/release/final-report-covid-select-concludes-2-year-investigation-issues-500-page-final-report-on-lessons-learned-and-the-path-forward/ https://oversight.house.gov/release/final-report-covid-selec... [2]: https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/2024.12.04-SSCP-FINAL-REPORT-ANS.pdf https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/2024.... [3]: https://meduza.io/en/news/2024/12/19/trump-s-ukraine-envoy-nominee-keith-kellogg-says-assassination-of-russian-general-igor-kirillov-was-not-a-good-idea-at-all https://meduza.io/en/news/2024/12/19/trump-s-ukraine-envoy-n...
- __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
  The trouble with the "not found in nature" business is that we have found far less than 1% of of the viral features that exist in nature. If you go pick a random subset of a randomly selected viral genome and determine its function, you're virtually guaranteed to have found something in nature which--until then--was not found in nature. We only bother doing that kind of research after a virus has started making people sick because it's expensive. It's called a spillover event and not a spillover status quo because it's new to us. To argue that it's manmade because we didn't see it coming is a gross overestimation of man's ability to make such things and of his ability to anticipate them. Even if we can glue things together that we found in nature, the threatening part is not the glue. The rest appears to be politics and has no bearing on what science might learn from COVID. Especially the first link, which reads more like a bunch of people patting their boss on the back in hopes that they don't get fired and nothing like the result of any kind of research. Nevermind their conflict of interest, what would congresspeople know about it in the first place? Some may release viruses of surprising structure on purpose or by accident, and nature does it also. That makes it relevant to understand ways to prevent and mitigate the impact of such events, but the nationalities of the people involved just doesn't impact the science in any way. I would be interested in reading the paper about the furin cleavage. Are you sure your link 3 is going to the right place?

deleted 2y ago