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Covid-19 likely to be man made

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    #1532
    astrofool
    Registered Users Posts: 16,457 ✭✭✭✭astrofool


    patnor1011 wrote: »
    What is weird on that comment? Do you realize that even screening programs are designed to meet certain conditions? Like for people of certain age when there is bigger chance to catch non symptomatic cases. We do not screen whole population.
    Absolute majority of cases are detected when symptoms are present. I was simply pointing on how medicine work in most of the cases.

    What's your point then? For some diseases where the cause is ambiguous, tests are used, for COVID, this separates COVID from flu/cold cases. In COVID case, close contacts are tested as people can be asymptomatic and shedding virus.


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    #1533
    banie01
    Registered Users Posts: 16,468 ✭✭✭✭banie01


    geospatial wrote: »
    An educated opinion from the Z division, with the resources they have at their disposal, is evidence.

    No it isn't, it's opinion.
    It's an educated and well trained opinion but it isn't evidence.
    It is an argument from authority that whilst it does carry weight, is not in any way evidential.

    No actual evidence of lab leak has been presented.
    It is taking the very basic position that where an outbreak is adjacent to a research lab conducting research into the type of virus that causes the outbreak, that a leak from said is a plausible cause.

    That doesn't mean likely, proximate or definite.
    It means that on a spectrum of possible sources a leak is a plausible source.
    It means, yeah sure a leak is possible, it might be that.

    Now ideally, a review of lab notebooks, research data and medical records would provide a quick yes/no.
    That doesn't seem to be forthcoming, and let's be honest at this point even if it was given?
    It would be assumed doctored.

    A position that then pops up is, Well! If the Chinese didn't make it? Leak it? Or somehow otherwise fúck up? Why not open the records and prove it?

    And I can see the point of that train of thought, however they have no need to present exculpatory evidence.
    Such evidence may not even exist, though it would do the search for an origin a service if it did.
    We are at a point where people are expecting China to prove it wasn't a lab leak, whilst presenting no evidence whatsoever, none, not 1 iota as of yet that it was China, that the pathogen leaked from WIV.

    Trump had reports of the circulation from Dec2019, he had nearly 11 months of China Virus and Kung Flu in an election year and presented absolutely zero evidence to substantiate any of the claims he made.
    That in itself isn't credible.
    Surely if he had the evidence, he would have leaned into it fully?


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    #1534
    Unicorn Milk Latte
    Registered Users Posts: 382 ✭✭Unicorn Milk Latte


    PintOfView wrote: »
    It seems that some people who were trying to discredit PCR tests seized on what he said
    and tried to interpret it as meaning that PCR tests are not valid for detecting covid.


    Exactly. PCR technology as such is so old that it was mentioned frequently by Scully in the X-Files, back in the day. :)


    The Covid PCR test was developed by Christian Drosten's team in Berlin, in early 2020, and made available globally right away. It is still the gold standard for Covid testing.
    Drosten has researched Coronaviruses for many years.


    Trying to take out of context quotes from Mullis to discredit Drosten's PCR test is a disinformation tactic. Not exactly subtle.


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    #1535
    geospatial
    Registered Users Posts: 200 ✭✭geospatial


    banie01 wrote: »
    No it isn't, it's opinion.
    It's an educated and well trained opinion but it isn't evidence.
    It is an argument from authority that whilst it does carry weight, is not in any way evidential.

    No actual evidence of lab leak has been presented.
    It is taking the very basic position that where an outbreak is adjacent to a research lab conducting research into the type of virus that causes the outbreak, that a leak from said is a plausible cause.

    An educated opinion from a scientist is scientific evidence. It may be the lowest classification of scientific evidence but it is scientific evidence. Without a study to back it up it is regarded as weak evidence. But the Z division would have studied the genome in detail because that's what they do, as they have some of the top genomics scientists in the world, and access to hundreds of others who work at a sister lab within Lawrence Berkeley Labs. So if they sent a report that suggested lab origin was plausible, it would have been based on their analysis of the SARS-CoV-2 genome.

    Plausible does not mean possible, it means credible or believable. In science it means there is evidence to support a hypothesis.

    From the beginning of this thread, there have been numerous claims of evidence for natural origin, literally every claim cites the paper by Anderson as evidence. I haven't read the whole thread, have you made this claim? Guess what?, it's an opinion. Just like his earlier opinion that the virus looked engineered. Just like every other opinion on virus origin from scientists, some based on studies of the genome, some based on statistical analysis, some on a review of circumstantial evidence, etc.

    Are you suggesting the only claim to back up lab origin is that the lab is next to the outbreak, so that's enough to effectively charge China with covering up a lab leak? Why is Dr Fauci asking China for medical records from miners who fell ill in Yunnan in 2012?

    Do you know the answer to this question?

    https://i2.wp.com/www.compoundchem.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/A-Rough-Guide-to-Types-of-Scientific-Evidence.png?resize=724%2C1024&ssl=1


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    #1536
    Dohnjoe
    Registered Users Posts: 17,774 ✭✭✭✭Dohnjoe


    Baltimore dialing back some of his comments

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/09/leading-biologist-dampens-his-smoking-gun-covid-lab-leak-theory
    A Nobel prize-winning US biologist, who has been widely quoted describing a “smoking gun” to support the thesis that Covid-19 was genetically modified and escaped from a Wuhan lab, has said he overstated the case.
    In the midst of the renewed controversy, one of the key scientific debates has drilled down into whether the virus’s furin cleavage site is so novel that it occurred through human manipulation rather than evolving naturally.

    Supporting the latter theory, some scientists point out that the same feature occurs in other common coronaviruses including ones that cause colds and that it appears intermittently in the family tree of coronaviruses.

    Baltimore’s clarification came as he was also challenged in Nature on another of his claims relating to Covid-19, that the coding of a segment found in the furin cleavage site was not usually found in viruses, with a fellow scientist pointing out the same coding was also a feature of the Sars virus.


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    #1537
    geospatial
    Registered Users Posts: 200 ✭✭geospatial


    Dohnjoe wrote: »
    Baltimore dialing back some of his comments

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/09/leading-biologist-dampens-his-smoking-gun-covid-lab-leak-theory

    Baltimore shouldn't have used the term "smoking gun", as it pointed the finger at the WIV, scientists whether active or retired should stay neutral on origin until more evidence is available.

    The furin cleavage site is common to a lot of human pathogens, some flus, HIV, Ebola, so it's clearly evolved independently in multiple species of virus. It's seen in other betacoronaviruses that infect humans, common cold (lineage A), MERS (lineage C) but until SARS-2 hadn't been seen in lineage B, SARS-1 does not have a furin cleavage site. It's not seen in RaTG13, the closest relative to SARS-2, or any other known close relatives, but that could just mean we haven't found it yet.

    The significance of the miners in Yunnan who fell ill (3 died) after working in a mine in 2012 is that's the location where RaTG13 and many other bat coronaviruses were collected by the WIV, which are the closest relatives to SARS-2 we know of. The controversy surrounding the Yunnan miners is that serum samples were sent to the WIV at the time for analysis. A masters thesis written at the time claims they had a viral infection and a PhD thesis written later claimed they had tested positive for SARS antibodies. Dr Shi has previously said they had a fungal infection and in Nov 2020 said they tested negative for SARS antibodies, so there's a clear conflict there. An easy way to clear it up would be to do a PCR test on the serum.

    Which brings us back to where we started, SARS-2 could have evolved in nature and made a zoonotic jump to humans, or was collected in nature and being being studied in the WIV and jumped to researchers, or could have been the result of manipulation in a lab and jumped to researchers. If natural then most likely a bat virus like RaTG13 recombined with another animal coronavirus (pangolin?) with a similar RBD to SARS-2 and evolved a furin site. If it originated in the lab a spike protein from an animal coronavirus was inserted into a bat virus like RaTG13. There is no evidence of this specific experiment happening, but there is lots of evidence of similar experiments.

    The attached describes work published by UNC in 2015 using bat coronavirus sequences (WIV1) and spike protein provided by the WIV, they describe making chimeric viruses that were "poised for human emergence". WIV1 is a bat coronavirus similar to SARS-1 that was isolated at the WIV in 2013 and found to infect humans directly (rare in bat coronaviruses). This is the work that was halted by the US moratorium in 2014, and apparently continued in Wuhan afterwards partially funded by the US govt.

    Regardless of the origin of SARS-2, the fact that this type of work was going on at all in what at the time were BSL-2 labs in Wuhan is an absolute scandal, given the frequency of prior lab spillovers. WIV1 could already infect humans directly, so they were both working with a human pathogen in these labs and making more dangerous versions of it. Maybe it's just me but that sounds like madness.

    https://www.pnas.org/content/113/11/3048


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    #1538
    Dohnjoe
    Registered Users Posts: 17,774 ✭✭✭✭Dohnjoe


    geospatial wrote: »

    The attached describes work published by UNC in 2015 using bat coronavirus sequences (WIV1) and spike protein provided by the WIV, they describe making chimeric viruses that were "poised for human emergence". WIV1 is a bat coronavirus similar to SARS-1 that was isolated at the WIV in 2013 and found to infect humans directly (rare in bat coronaviruses). This is the work that was halted by the US moratorium in 2014, and apparently continued in Wuhan afterwards partially funded by the US govt.

    Regardless of the origin of SARS-2, the fact that this type of work was going on at all in what at the time were BSL-2 labs in Wuhan is an absolute scandal, given the frequency of prior lab spillovers. WIV1 could already infect humans directly, so they were both working with a human pathogen in these labs and making more dangerous versions of it. Maybe it's just me but that sounds like madness.

    https://www.pnas.org/content/113/11/3048

    Right, but from my reading of this they are doing so to understand these viruses better - as a lay-person you are of the opinion they shouldn't be doing this because "it might escape the lab" correct?


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    #1539
    geospatial
    Registered Users Posts: 200 ✭✭geospatial


    Dohnjoe wrote: »
    Right, but from my reading of this they are doing so to understand these viruses better - as a lay-person you are of the opinion they shouldn't be doing this because "it might escape the lab" correct?

    Broadly speaking yes. I share the opinion of many scientists (like the Cambridge Working group, attached) who have serious concerns about this type of work in the US, let alone collaborating with a totalitarian regime on such work, as we know if there were a lab accident they would do everything possible to cover it up. I think the "gain of function" work itself is extremely questionable from a bioethics standpoint to begin with.

    What they are trying to do (in lay man's terms) is build viruses that may emerge from nature and cause a pandemic, to get ahead of nature so to speak. The ultimate goal is to develop treatments and vaccines, which of course is a very noble goal. Can this be done without the type of work described? I would say developments in gene therapy say it can. In fact the development of mRNA vaccines just from the genome sequence of the spike protein of SARS-2 says it can.

    Might escape from a lab? There are plenty examples of pathogens escaping from labs, including six known spillovers of SARS-1, four of them in Beijing, and including spillovers that caused pandemics like H1N1 from the USSR in 1977 (never disclosed by them). The chances of a lab spillover are actually quite high, even from the most secure BSL-4 labs. The chances of spillover from a BSL-2 and BSL-3 labs like WIV were using are extremely high. Even in the UNC lab which was BSL-3, a researcher doing the type of experiments described above was bitten through her glove by an infected mouse, fortunately she wasn't infected.

    So, the question is does the reward of such work justify the risk? I would say yes up to a point, but when we get to the point of helping build dangerous pathogens in a BSL-2 lab in China we have gone way over the line imo.

    http://www.cambridgeworkinggroup.org/


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    #1540
    Dohnjoe
    Registered Users Posts: 17,774 ✭✭✭✭Dohnjoe


    geospatial wrote: »
    Broadly speaking yes. I share the opinion of many scientists (like the Cambridge Working group, attached) who have serious concerns about this type of work in the US, let alone collaborating with a totalitarian regime on such work, as we know if there were a lab accident they would do everything possible to cover it up. I think the "gain of function" work itself is extremely questionable from a bioethics standpoint to begin with.

    What they are trying to do (in lay man's terms) is build viruses that may emerge from nature and cause a pandemic, to get ahead of nature so to speak. The ultimate goal is to develop treatments and vaccines, which of course is a very noble goal. Can this be done without the type of work described? I would say developments in gene therapy say it can. In fact the development of mRNA vaccines just from the genome sequence of the spike protein of SARS-2 says it can.

    Might escape from a lab? There are plenty examples of pathogens escaping from labs, including six known spillovers of SARS-1, four of them in Beijing, and including spillovers that caused pandemics like H1N1 from the USSR in 1977 (never disclosed by them). The chances of a lab spillover are actually quite high, even from the most secure BSL-4 labs. The chances of spillover from a BSL-2 and BSL-3 labs like WIV were using are extremely high. Even in the UNC lab which was BSL-3, a researcher doing the type of experiments described above was bitten through her glove by an infected mouse, fortunately she wasn't infected.

    So, the question is does the reward of such work justify the risk? I would say yes up to a point, but when we get to the point of helping build dangerous pathogens in a BSL-2 lab in China we have gone way over the line imo.

    http://www.cambridgeworkinggroup.org/

    Indeed, but this argument boils down to "it could escape the lab", which is a catch-22 risk associated with any lab studying viruses anywhere


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    #1541
    geospatial
    Registered Users Posts: 200 ✭✭geospatial


    Dohnjoe wrote: »
    Indeed, but this argument boils down to "it could escape the lab", which is a catch-22 risk associated with any lab studying viruses anywhere

    It boils down to bioethics and where on the spectrum of risk various types of research lie and the safety standards where it is conducted. I agree all labs studying pathogens have risks, accidents happen. The US government felt strongly enough in 2014 to issue a moratorium on gain of function research on Influenza, SARS and MERS viruses, due to concerns about lab leaks starting a pandemic. It's quite obvious now that research that was halted in the US continued in China with the help of US scientists and US funding. We know this because of published research and US scientists talking openly about the work until recently. I have an issue with that, I think it was unethical. I fully accept that the scientists involved are passionate about their work and believe it is for good purpose. However, there are also many scientists who believed the risk outweighed the reward, long before this pandemic.

    I think what's needed is international agreement on this type of research and it will have to come with full transparency from the countries involved. Maybe that's one good outcome of the pandemic.


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    #1542
    Dohnjoe
    Registered Users Posts: 17,774 ✭✭✭✭Dohnjoe


    Well this forum has certainly come a long way from the virus being fake, Satan creating it, governments all around deliberately crashing their economies - to an ethical debate about virus research


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    #1543
    patnor1011
    Registered Users Posts: 2,956 ✭✭✭patnor1011


    Dohnjoe wrote: »
    Right, but from my reading of this they are doing so to understand these viruses better - as a lay-person you are of the opinion they shouldn't be doing this because "it might escape the lab" correct?

    Not might. It already happened. Last sars outbreak in China was exactly due to lab leak and the same happened with mers outbreak.
    Lab leaks are simply happening all the time.

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/gottlieb-lab-leaks-happen-all-the-time/ar-AAKxgxw

    https://nationalpost.com/news/a-brief-terrifying-history-of-viruses-escaping-from-labs-70s-chinese-pandemic-was-a-lab-mistake


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    #1544
    geospatial
    Registered Users Posts: 200 ✭✭geospatial


    patnor1011 wrote: »
    Not might. It already happened. Last sars outbreak in China was exactly due to lab leak and the same happened with mers outbreak.
    Lab leaks are simply happening all the time.

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/gottlieb-lab-leaks-happen-all-the-time/ar-AAKxgxw

    https://nationalpost.com/news/a-brief-terrifying-history-of-viruses-escaping-from-labs-70s-chinese-pandemic-was-a-lab-mistake

    One of the arguments heard is that a pandemic due to a lab leak or manipulated virus has never happened so that supports natural origin. There is actually a precedent which has echoes of Covid. A pandemic in 1977 that killed 700k people (luckily many adults had immunity from the 1950s) of a strain of H1N1 (Spanish flu) that just happened to be almost identical to a strain last seen in the 1950s, a totalitarian government that covered it up (USSR), the WHO at the time saying they excluded lab origin as they talked to USSR researchers who said they never had H1N1 in their laboratories. They were of course lying through their teeth, they were developing a live H1N1 vaccine and had conducted trials. The only plausible explanations are it either leaked in a lab accident or was the result of a vaccine trial.

    I see the EU have now called for a new transparent investigation, calling the earlier WHO investigation "insufficient". A welcome development. The biggest obstacle obviously is the CCP, they clearly conducted a cover up in the first few months of the outbreak and any properly conducted investigation would expose this.


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    #1545
    Igotadose
    Registered Users Posts: 12,952 ✭✭✭✭Igotadose


    Unicorn Milk Latte wrote: »
    Once again, to provide context:


    Kary Mullis is a tragic figure. An example that even highly intelligent people are not immune to mental illness, and the consequences of drug abuse.

    Herself was at the same university after Mullis got his Nobel. He was a notorious eccentric, living in a nice home near the beach in San Diego. When asked what winning the Nobel did for him, he said, "it enabled me to buy a nice house and surf, which let me meet a lot of beautiful women."

    The PCR he invented he dreamed up when he was learning to program in FORTRAN and applied 'do loops' to biochemical reactions, as I understand it. Brilliant insight gained in basically one late night in the lab.

    But, after the Nobel he didn't do all that much science, and was noted to be a big time dope smoker. Tragic that someone with such great insights didn't contribute more. People's hardships being lied about and weaponized by CT types is the least worst of the things they do.


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    #1546
    mcsean2163
    Registered Users Posts: 1,839 ✭✭✭mcsean2163


    Guardian trying to make up for their misreporting.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/01/wuhan-coronavirus-lab-leak-covid-virus-origins-china


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    #1547
    geospatial
    Registered Users Posts: 200 ✭✭geospatial


    mcsean2163 wrote: »
    Guardian trying to make up for their misreporting.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/01/wuhan-coronavirus-lab-leak-covid-virus-origins-china

    It's getting really nasty on Twitter now, lot's of accusations flying around, journalists and scientists accused of being financially incentivized not to seek the truth.

    This is a good summary on the origins of SARS-CoV-2, and has the most sensible conclusion at present: "On the basis of currently available data it is not possible to determine whether the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 is the result of zoonosis from a wild viral strain or an accidental escape of experimental strains".

    There's some recent information online that the suspected wet market in Wuhan contained a lot of protected wild animals like racoon dogs (which are like mink bred and farmed in China), and these were removed before the market was shut down and samples taken for analysis. If the origin was zoonotic then this is a plausible explanation as you could get rapid evolution on a farm similar to how influenza viruses evolve on chicken farms.


    https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10311-020-01151-1


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    #1548
    Unicorn Milk Latte
    Registered Users Posts: 382 ✭✭Unicorn Milk Latte


    The most valid criticism I've heard up to now is that Chinese scientists have not (yet) looked into raccoon dogs as a link between bats and humans. They are the link for other versions of SARS, can be found in the wild, and are used in millions for fur production. The wild ones eat bats, among other things.
    Present at the Wuhan market as well, although it's not clear how significant that market actually was.

    It's already been confirmed that they can be carriers for SARS-COV-2 (meaning they can be infected), and can transmit from animal to animal. The study about that seems to be the only scientific paper relating to their connection to SARS-COV-2 at the moment.

    They seem to be a likely possible link.

    Also considering that there have been outbreaks in mink farms, where large numbers of mink had to be killed. Closely related species.


    There is really no scientific reason not to investigate whether they are the link species.


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    #1549
    banie01
    Registered Users Posts: 16,468 ✭✭✭✭banie01


    Interesting twitter thread from Laurie Garrett with a link to pre-print paper.
    Large number of genetically similar Corona virus' discovered in multi-institute investigation into wild populations in Yunan province.
    Including 3 with similar spike protein.
    Lots to digest here and I look forward to the peer review.

    https://t.co/chdLX1ZwtR?amp=1

    https://twitter.com/Laurie_Garrett/status/1404147235370278917?s=19

    https://twitter.com/Laurie_Garrett/status/1404147236330684417?s=19


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    #1550
    geospatial
    Registered Users Posts: 200 ✭✭geospatial


    banie01 wrote: »
    Interesting twitter thread from Laurie Garrett with a link to pre-print paper.
    Large number of genetically similar Corona virus' discovered in multi-institute investigation into wild populations in Yunan province.
    Including 3 with similar spike protein.

    There really isn't that much new here, the WIV have been collecting horseshoe bat samples since the first SARS outbreak in 2003 and collecting samples in Yunnan since 2012, likely linked to the miners who fell ill with SARS like symptoms. Several of the viruses they have isolated and sequenced (WIV1 for example) have a weak affinity to ACE2 and can infect humans, although not very transmissible. I think a limited study of people living in that area of Yunnan had a few % with SARS antibodies, and another study demonstrated that animal traders had as high as 40%.

    The virus that's closest to SARS-2 that we know of is RaTG13 (96.4%) disclosed by the WIV in Jan 2020, although at least one of these new ones is close. They all seem to have a lot of commonality in their backbone, the differences are in their spike proteins. We still haven't found a realistic SARS-2 precursor candidate (it would need to be >99% similar) nor any evidence of where it developed such high adaptation to humans. The answer may be in mink or racoon dog farms as speculated above, but if that's true you would expect a human outbreak in those locations and we don't know of any.


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    #1551
    mcsean2163
    Registered Users Posts: 1,839 ✭✭✭mcsean2163


    geospatial wrote: »
    There really isn't that much new here, the WIV have been collecting horseshoe bat samples since the first SARS outbreak in 2003 and collecting samples in Yunnan since 2012, likely linked to the miners who fell ill with SARS like symptoms. Several of the viruses they have isolated and sequenced (WIV1 for example) have a weak affinity to ACE2 and can infect humans, although not very transmissible. I think a limited study of people living in that area of Yunnan had a few % with SARS antibodies, and another study demonstrated that animal traders had as high as 40%.

    The virus that's closest to SARS-2 that we know of is RaTG13 (96.4%) disclosed by the WIV in Jan 2020, although at least one of these new ones is close. They all seem to have a lot of commonality in their backbone, the differences are in their spike proteins. We still haven't found a realistic SARS-2 precursor candidate (it would need to be >99% similar) nor any evidence of where it developed such high adaptation to humans. The answer may be in mink or racoon dog farms as speculated above, but if that's true you would expect a human outbreak in those locations and we don't know of any.

    It's a bizarre esoteric research line of enquiry when 1 of the 3 bsl 4 labs in the world conducting GOF research on bat coronaviruses is based in Wuhan. Why not pigs in Timbuktu instead of racoon ferret pangolin dogs?


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    #1552
    geospatial
    Registered Users Posts: 200 ✭✭geospatial


    The New York Times published an article today based on an email interview with Shi Zhengli, director of the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases at the WIH. Shi vehemently denied her lab was involved in the outbreak of Covid-19, and also answered the question on gain of function research, claiming that her research differed from gain of function work in that they did not set out to make a virus more dangerous, but to understand how it might jump across species: "My lab has never conducted or cooperated in conducting GOF experiments that enhance the virulence of viruses".

    This is exactly what Dr Fauci means when he says we do not fund gain of research work in China. So, let's take a look at the joint paper that Shi collaborated on with Ralph Baric at UNC in 2014. If you read the first paragraph, they create a chimeric virus from the spike of bat coronavirus SHC014 in a mouse adapted SARS-CoV backbone. What they were studying is whether this novel spike could cause disease, they test it on humanized mice, and they found this hybrid virus did indeed cause disease and monoclonal antibodies and vaccine candidates did not protect from infection. After this work in 2014, Shi continued these type of experiments in the WIV with viruses collected in Yunnan.

    Shi (and Fauci) is saying such work is not gain of function, as they are not trying to make more dangerous pathogens in terms of virulence, they are making hybrid viruses to see if they will infect humans easier, basically predicting that under the right mutation or recombination events in nature, SARS-CoV could reemerge from existing bat coronaviruses. Personally I think making a hybrid virus to see if it can more easily infect humans is gain of function, but there is much disagreement on this topic.

    https://www.nature.com/articles/nm.3985


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    #1553
    splashuum
    Registered Users Posts: 519 ✭✭✭splashuum


    https://twitter.com/mns/status/1404665481886195717?s=21

    Hilarious the way Colbert couldn’t bare seeing Stewart speak the truth :D


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    #1554
    paw patrol
    Registered Users Posts: 2,314 ✭✭✭paw patrol


    paw patrol wrote: »
    i#ve been saying this since march. the idea it came from a middle ages style animal/food market was beyond fanciful.


    the magic market that was just down the road from the level 4 lab that holds all this type of stuff . If you believe the wet-market story you'd believe anything
    Deleted User wrote: »
    From reading your posts over the past few months, you literally believe anything

    https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=114627969

    well that retort aged well....:pac:


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    #1555
    Tenger
    Moderators, Motoring & Transport Moderators Posts: 9,720 Mod ✭✭✭✭Tenger


    splashuum wrote: »
    https://twitter.com/mns/status/1404665481886195717?s=21

    Hilarious the way Colbert couldn’t bare seeing Stewart speak the truth :D
    Funny that, I watched the full clip on The Late Show youtube channel. Colbert joins in with Stewart in his spiel.


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    #1556
    Dohnjoe
    Registered Users Posts: 17,774 ✭✭✭✭Dohnjoe


    paw patrol wrote: »
    https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=114627969

    well that retort aged well....:pac:

    No link has been demonstrated, so there's no need for the "my speculation was right all along" celebrations.

    There have been countless insane conspiracies about Covid on this forum, the only one that people have repeatedly said couldn't be ruled out was the lab-leak theory.


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    #1557
    paw patrol
    Registered Users Posts: 2,314 ✭✭✭paw patrol


    Dohnjoe wrote: »
    No link has been demonstrated, so there's no need for the "my speculation was right all along" celebrations.

    There have been countless insane conspiracies about Covid on this forum, the only one that people have repeatedly said couldn't be ruled out was the lab-leak theory.

    LOLz


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    #1558
    Dohnjoe
    Registered Users Posts: 17,774 ✭✭✭✭Dohnjoe


    paw patrol wrote: »
    LOLz

    Indeed.


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    #1559
    PintOfView
    Registered Users Posts: 857 ✭✭✭PintOfView


    Dohnjoe wrote: »
    No link has been demonstrated, so there's no need for the "my speculation was right all along" celebrations.

    There have been countless insane conspiracies about Covid on this forum, the only one that people have repeatedly said couldn't be ruled out was the lab-leak theory.

    I agree, it was never possible to say it couldn't be a lab leak,
    just like it was never possible to say it couldn't be animal to human.

    What it was possible to do was say they were wrong to people who were sure it was a lab leak,
    because it wasn't, and still isn't, possible to be sure of what the source was.

    Recent information, such as the lab workers who went to hospital with symptoms that could be covid,
    has pushed the probability needle a bit more towards the lab leak theory,
    but nobody can say for sure yet what was the origin.


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    #1560
    Unicorn Milk Latte
    Registered Users Posts: 382 ✭✭Unicorn Milk Latte


    geospatial wrote: »
    Personally I think making a hybrid virus to see if it can more easily infect humans is gain of function, but there is much disagreement on this topic.


    My understanding is that what they're basically doing is combining properties of viruses that occur naturally, because they expect that the same combination will appear in nature in a single virus in the near future.


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    #1561
    geospatial
    Registered Users Posts: 200 ✭✭geospatial


    Dohnjoe wrote: »
    There have been countless insane conspiracies about Covid on this forum, the only one that people have repeatedly said couldn't be ruled out was the lab-leak theory.

    Lab leak hypothesis covers a lot though.

    1. A virus that was sampled in the wild, brought to the WIV for study, and jumped to a human in the lab. We know there are SARS viruses that can jump directly to humans.
    2. A virus collected in the wild and cultured / serial passaged in the lab through animal cells, infected a lab worker.
    3. A virus collected in the wild, genetically engineered to create a chimera virus which was cultured and infected a lab worker.

    We can't exclude any of these. I think we can safely exclude made from scratch, and a bioweapon as it isn't a very good bioweapon, so it's very unlikely the PLA would be working on it.


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