Covid-19 likely to be man made

patnor1011 wrote: »

Because he was involved in funding research there while being one of the most vocal opponents of that theory last few months? All the while discussing possibility privately with other scientists?

If, hypothetically, China are keeping this under wraps, why would they tell anyone else? why would they literally tell the enemy? (the US). That makes no sense.

PintOfView wrote: »

How much funding did Fauci provide to WIV, and where is it documented?
What was he discussing privately with other scientists, and, again, how do you know?

The NIH gave grants of $3.7M over six years (to 2020) to EcoHealth to study bat coronaviruses, who used $600K of that to fund the WIV.

The information on Fauci comes from recently released emails from Jan/Feb. On Jan 31 he was sent an email by Kristian Andersen which suggested the virus was engineered, he sent an email to a number of scientists to convene a conference call to discuss. We don't know any more than that as the emails are heavily redacted.

I think accusing Fauci of a cover up is unfair.

mcsean2163 wrote: »

I wonder how many lives might have been saved if this was properly investigated from the start. In Ireland, we might have closed the airports sooner if covid19 was suspected to be something else other than natural spillover.

This makes no sense. Why would Covid be any less harmful if the origin is natural spillover? It's highly adaptive, the original Wuhan variant played effectively no role whatsoever outside of China.


The issue in the early days was that there was no fast response to prevent spread. Governments decided to go with a 'wait and see' approach. Which was a serious mistake.


This WHO report released in May details all the failures, and has specific, strategic suggestions how a pandemic can be prevented in the future.

Mic 1972 wrote: »

The lab theory could be correct even without Wuhan.
In which case we have no clue where and who created the virus

mcsean2163 wrote: »

I suspect governments would have been much less likely to 'wait and see' were it known that it was potentially a lab leak. Fear would have been way higher. Restricting airports early could have saved a LOT of lives. I'd wager a lot of people have died due to the censorship and dismissals.

This forum was a microcosm of the global environment with posters jeered and mocked for suggesting the logical and obvious route be investigated. Again, reflecting the u turn the ones that were attacking those looking for transparency are now saying that they never said it wasn't possible.

It's disgusting.

If you look back at the first post in this thread the title is
"Trump and CIA Director Admit Covid-19 Was Man Made"

Can you see what was wrong with that?

IMO there are two things wrong,
1) It is worded in such a way to suggest that it was an established fact that Covid was man made,
which it wasn't, and still isn't, and the title was simply blatant misinformation.
2) Secondly, the credibility of the statement was immediately suspect as it mentioned Trump was one of those 'admitting' it
(a man who uttered 30,000+ untruths during his 4 years as POTUS)

If you look back at the early posts in this thread they seem to fall into two camps,
a) those who say that it must have come from WIV, while being unable to provide evidence, and
b) those who say it's not conclusive, and linking to reports showing scientists saying it's unlikely, etc.

How can you say it's "disgusting" for people to raise objections and look for evidence
when others rush to conclusions without definitive evidence, and ignore opinions of scientists?

It's been clear all along that both options, from lab, or from nature, are possible.
It's never, even yet, been clear that one or other of those options is 'definite'

mcsean2163 wrote: »

are now saying that they never said it wasn't possible.

It's disgusting.

Can you quote where some one has said the lab leak theory wasn't possible?

Unicorn Milk Latte wrote: »

You obviously didn't bother to read the report, or even the summary, before making up nonsense to discredit it.

I've read the report, in it's entirety. When it was released and read the summary again after you posted it. I've made up nothing, the facts regarding how this pandemic evolved and the efforts of the CCP to downplay it are well established.

It's a complete whitewash report that ignores the efforts by the CCP to suppress information on the outbreak in the vital weeks up to January 23rd, and the complete failure of the WHO to demand access to Wuhan and to recommend travel restrictions.

You don't think it's worth mentioning that the Chinese government activity threatened doctors and scientists and punished anyone warning of the dangers of an emerging disease? You don't think it was worth mentioning that they were claiming there were no new cases in Wuhan after the initial cases in late December to as late as January 17th, when there were already cases outside China by then?

There have been several studies done since on how many cases Wuhan had in January 2020, the estimates are 4,000 cases by January 18, rising to almost 9,000 cases when the lockdown was imposed January 23. So we are supposed to believe a highly infectious virus stopped spreading for several weeks when there were no restrictions after Dec 31st and then suddenly surged so much in a few days that a brutal lockdown was required? The CCP were obviously lying through their teeth.

The only thing that could have prevented the pandemic was an early lockdown of Wuhan, yet 5 million people were allowed leave Wuhan up to January 20th, while cases were climbing rapidly. The only thing that could have slowed the global spread were travel restrictions, yet the WHO were still advising against travel restrictions at the end of February. This doesn't bother you? Given that there is universal agreement now that travel restrictions were the only way to contain the spread, as was done by Taiwan, Singapore, S Korea, Australia and N Zealand who have suffered a small fraction of deaths compared to the west. It took western countries a long time to figure this out as the WHO were advising against it.

What should have been done? The WHO should have demanded access as soon as they learned of the new disease on Dec 31st, brought in an international team to study the outbreak, and insisted on a lockdown of Wuhan and travel restrictions. As was done in 2003 during the first SARS outbreak, the difference being the WHO was led by a strong leader who faced down the CCP.

It is simply baffling that people are still defending the CCP and the WHO for their utter dereliction of duty in Jan - March 2020. Almost 4 million people are dead because of a cover up by the CCP and the utter failures of the WHO.

geospatial wrote: »

It's a complete whitewash report that ignores the efforts by the CCP to suppress information on the outbreak in the vital weeks up to January 23rd,

You mean, after the Chinese scientists made the complete genome public in early January 2020?

geospatial wrote: »

It is simply baffling that people are still defending the CCP

OK, the only reason I can imagine for a sentence like that is paranoia.


From the 'science letter' you linked to - that, BTW, does not accuse China or the WHO, or states that a lab origin is likely:


"WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus commented that the report's consideration of evidence supporting a laboratory accident was insufficient and offered to provide additional resources to fully evaluate the possibility.
...
Finally, in this time of unfortunate anti-Asian sentiment in some countries, we note that at the beginning of the pandemic, it was Chinese doctors, scientists, journalists, and citizens who shared with the world crucial information about the spread of the virus—often at great personal cost. We should show the same determination in promoting a dispassionate science-based discourse on this difficult but important issue."

geospatial wrote: »

Why do you personally think lab origin is extremely unlikely?

Two reasons:
- I'm not really into conspiracy theories
- it's what pretty much every credible virologist and epidemiologist says.

geospatial wrote: »

But it wasn't investigated. Why do you think 18 prominent scientists wrote a letter to Science magazine in May 2021, criticizing the joint CCP/WHO investigation and calling for a new transparent investigation? They reject the findings of "likely to very likely" for zoonotic origin, and "extremely unlikely" for laboratory origin. Are these scientists irrational in your opinion? Ralph Baric irrational? David Relman irrational?

Why do you personally think lab origin is extremely unlikely?

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6543/694.1

That is not what that letter says.

The letter says that the previous investigation was not conducted thoroughly enough to reach it's conclusion, the scientists themselves are not proponents of a lab leak theory (at least in that letter).

They basically wrote a letter saying that the evidence within a paper wasn't sufficient to reach the conclusion of the paper, not that the conclusion of the paper was wrong or right.

Maybe outside of that letter they are proponents of the lab leak theory, but I'd be extremely worried if scientific papers weren't being challenged in this way, it's part of the scientific process and up to the authors of the paper to respond (which might be to dismiss their concerns due to evidence already within the paper or provide other evidence that wasn't published).

mcsean2163 wrote: »

My experience has been.

Me:. Everything should be investigated and transparency is good.

This thread: show me the published paper that proves it is a lab leak or shut up.

There is now a considerable number of publications discussing why journals rushed zoonotic theory papers like proximal but rejected lab leak papers and highlighting such things as censoring of the word Taiwan by Nature. I'm genuinely shocked by how it played out. Taiwan warned the WHO of human to human transmission but the WHO chose to follow the line of no human to human transmission, e.g. Jan 14.

Root and branch reform is needed not people shouting shut up to those looking for a transparent credible investigation.

This topic should never have been moved to conspiracies. Lab leak should be in the coronavirus forum and discussed rationally.

This is disingenuous, the calling card for a conspiracy theorist is that every investigation that goes against their theory should spawn another investigation. In this case there has been an investigation, the investigation found no evidence, no new evidence has come to light since then. The US is conducting another investigation, people on this thread are asking those pushing the lab leak theory will they accept the outcome of this investigation and the proponents of the lab leak theory are saying not if it says there wasn't a lab leak.

The other aspect of it is that if it was a lab leak, what does this mean, and there it becomes incoherent again.

And when I say disingenuous, you have posters referring to trumps statement but then ignoring the fact he said COVID would disappear, that it's harmless that they would have it covered in 15 days etc.

Will you accept the findings of the current investigation?

astrofool wrote: »

That is not what that letter says.

It is what the letter says, they rejected the findings of the CCP/WHO investigation as in their view there was no evidence to determine one hypothesis as "likely to very likely" and another "extremely unlikely". As we know now there was no investigation of lab origin.

astrofool wrote: »

In this case there has been an investigation, the investigation found no evidence, no new evidence has come to light since then. The US is conducting another investigation, people on this thread are asking those pushing the lab leak theory will they accept the outcome of this investigation and the proponents of the lab leak theory are saying not if it says there wasn't a lab leak.

Will you accept the findings of the current investigation?

But there wasn't an investigation. The member of the WHO team tasked with lab origin had already decided lab origin was impossible and had said this publicly on numerous occasions (I wonder why he was the only acceptable US member to the CCP). He had the opportunity to ask for lab data from WIV which would have potentially ruled out lab origin and he declined to ask for it. He has zero interest in looking for evidence of lab origin and has lots of reasons to not look for such evidence.

Why would anyone accept an investigation outcome with no evidence of an investigation? Isn't that the main argument against conspiracy theories (which I share), believing something with no evidence?

Anyone who believes there was an investigation into lab origin by the WHO and it concluded "extremely unlikely" based on finding no evidence is a conspiracy theorist. They didn't look for any evidence.