Coronavirus

Out of context: Reply #6334

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  • yuekit0

    People also need to go back and look at the timeline of events regarding lab leak....there's nothing at all notable about a US government agency speculating about this.

    Some of the very first rumors about it coming from a lab came from the Trump administration. Mike Pompeo was particularly eager to push this idea into the media and popular opinion.

    But what's the evidence for this? No one has been able to come up with any. In fact, many of the stories and rumors put out by the US government have ended up being wrong much like Iraqi WMDs. Even Chris Wallace of Fox News noticed this...

    https://news.yahoo.com/chris-wal…

    Now think about the irony of all these anti-establishment people whose entire identity revolves around their hatred for the establishment and MSM. All it took was one totally unsourced claim for one government department to convince you.

    yuekit 0Permalink
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    • I think the truth is that there's no definitive proof for either Lab Leak or Wet Market. I also think China does have the information to prove it but won't.Morning_star
    • No definitive proof but a strong case can be made...check out this paper for instance.
      https://www.science.…      yuekit
    • The author of that study says 1 in 10,000 chance it didn't come from the market...so I'm actually underselling it lol. I try to keep an open mind, if somethingyuekit
    • comes to light pointing to the lab I'll change my view. But I wonder if people have even seen these arguments - the media has done a terrible job explaining it.yuekit
    • I'm undecided but i'm leaning towards Lab Leak particularly as... (from the link you posted)..."We also lack direct evidence of an intermediate animal...Morning_star
    • ...animal infected with a SARS-CoV-2 progenitor virus either at the Huanan market or at a location connected to its supply chain, such as a farm. Additionally..Morning_star
    • ...no line list of early COVID-19 cases is available.

      Which suggests to me that whilst the epicentre of infection was the market, it's origin cannot be...      Morning_star
    • ...linked to an animal vector.Morning_star
    • But...very close to the market is a Lab that was studying SARS-CoV-2.Morning_star
    • Right but considering they cleared the market and destroyed all the animals that were being sold there, you wouldn't expect to find any infected animals.yuekit
    • What they do know is that animals that can carry SARS-CoV-2 and spread it to humans were being sold there at that time.yuekit
    • That's an amazing coincidence if it didn't come from there. Anyway if you read the paper above I think it makes a pretty compelling case.yuekit
    • your mental gymnastics are laughablezardoz
    • The funny thing is there aren't really any mental gymnastics needed. From the scientific point of view, it's a very strong case for natural origin.yuekit
    • I’ve read and re-read that article. There is no evidence that the virus originated at the Market, none. If anecdote and speculation is good enough for you...Morning_star
    • ..that all good. But there’s as much, if not more for the ‘origin’ being the lab.Morning_star
    • The earliest known cases were animal traders working at the market. The market was heavily infected with the positive samples clustered around animal cages,yuekit
    • how is that not evidence? You have to look past what people like Matt Ridley are saying, they don't actually represent the most informed view.yuekit
    • https://www.npr.org/…yuekit
    • ^ This is a good article...scroll down a bit and you'll it runs through some of the most detailed evidence.yuekit
    • Thanks. I'll give it a read. How are you getting to your conclusion that you can dismiss Ridley and the others?Morning_star
    • It's a real puzzle. I can only conclude he's reading from a script.zardoz
    • Why would you believe Matt Ridley? This is what he was saying a decade ago.
      https://archive.is/M…      yuekit
    • He's been wrong on so many things from climate change to the origins of AIDS, which he also thought came from a lab.yuekit
    • Could you address the claims he and many others are making? Trying to discredit the people rather than showing evidence contrary to the claims has no...Morning_star
    • ...value for me. The evidence for Lab or Market origins is not clear either way, and it may never be.Morning_star
    • There are a lot of different claims they're making and it's not clear what it all adds up to. But just to take one, in the interview he did with Jordan Petersonyuekit
    • Matt Ridley said that the furin cleavage site of SARS-2 is an "extra bit" that looks like it's been artificially inserted. This isn't actually what virologistsyuekit
    • think. The furin cleavage site is really just a short sequence of amino acids, and it's found in many other coronaviruses.yuekit
    • https://www.scienced…yuekit
    • Also the furin cleavage site in SARS-2 isn't actually optimized very well.
      https://www.pnas.org…      yuekit
    • So when you start with a false assumption like that, it's easy to reach the wrong conclusion. And there are a bunch of other things like this, where he andyuekit
    • Alina Chan say things that are partly true but leave out or misrepresent some part of it. And they've succeeded in confusing people -- like above you saidyuekit
    • "very close to the market is a Lab that was studying SARS-CoV-2." That's not actually true either...the lab wasn't very close and there's no evidence they hadyuekit
    • the virus or knew about it before the outbreak happened. But I can totally understand how you got that impression from listening to these people.yuekit
    • BTW just now the viruses the WIV was studying have been released publicly...and they didn't have it.yuekit
    • https://twitter.com/…yuekit
    • Interesting but the list isn't comprehensive. In response, the following link is a good summary.Morning_star
    • https://www.theweek.…Morning_star
    • One of the most powerful weapons against China would be to get the world to hate them for the virus.ShenanigansTV
    • Yeah that's interesting Morning_star but there isn't really any proof it came from the WIV. And it was an experiment was a known virus, MERS.yuekit
    • Creating SARS-CoV-2 in a lab would have required finding a very similar predecessor virus. This predecessor would have been a very significant discovery.yuekit
    • Because it would have been different from other SARS viruses known to date. The 2018 paper was a survey of SARS viruses, including about 50 from across China...yuekit
    • And there's no mention at all of SARS-CoV-2 or anything like it. The closest is the RaTG13 virus, which they already released.yuekit
    • You can say maybe this, maybe that but at some point the evidence starts to stack up. And it's really not on the side of lab leak.yuekit
    • https://twitter.com/…yuekit
    • ^ This French scientist is a good person to follow this topic. She went through actually analyzed in detail the claims being made by lab leak people. And turnsyuekit
    • out a surprising number of them are not just BS, but easily debunked BS based on poor or amateur interpretation of the data.yuekit
    • And this fooled major publications like the Washington Post, BBC and others.
      https://twitter.com/…      yuekit
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