Covid-19 likely to be man made

astrofool · 08-06-2021 11:15am

Deleted User wrote: »

https://www.bitchute.com/video/I34oouXAb7Dj/

The "fact" "checkers" have "debunked" it heavily on Google by the looks of things there though..

This guy (Nobel prize winner) was NOT a fan of Fauci..

I do find it amazing how you're willing to believe this debunked scientist vs. non-debunked scientists refuting this

But, OK, say PCR tests don't detect COVID, what does that mean, why are they using them, what is your angle here? Or are you afraid to post it? (it is a CT forum, so anything goes, just be prepared to get it analysed).

As a simple example, cancer is usually diagnosed by a lab, not by symptoms.

Vaccinated30 · 08-06-2021 11:27am

astrofool wrote: »

I do find it amazing how you're willing to believe this debunked scientist vs. non-debunked scientists refuting this

But, OK, say PCR tests don't detect COVID, what does that mean, why are they using them, what is your angle here? Or are you afraid to post it? (it is a CT forum, so anything goes, just be prepared to get it analysed).

As a simple example, cancer is usually diagnosed by a lab, not by symptoms.

Also can he explain why, even though having all covid symptoms and multiple tests, why did I not have covid and therefore have flu/cold/viral infections etc

Also why the children in my estate all have big chesty coughs and all negative pcr tests. If they wanted to make this 'fake virus' real, surely these would all be 'fake' positive results

Tenger · 08-06-2021 11:29am

[Deleted User] wrote: »

And the person who developed said test maintained they were not fit for such usage..

That person also said some really dubious things........

Unicorn Milk Latte · 08-06-2021 2:52pm

Deleted User wrote: »

[LINK REMOVED]

The "fact" "checkers" have "debunked" it heavily on Google by the looks of things there though..

This guy (Nobel prize winner) was NOT a fan of Fauci..

Wow. Kary Mullis again.
As a 'source' to discredit Fauci. Again. Seriously?????

Mullis passed away before Covid started.

He was, once, decades ago, a scientist who won a Nobel prize.

Then he succumbed to mental illness, either in combination of, or caused by, severe drug abuse.

The context of his comments about Fauci: while Mullis had not done any real research in decades, Fauci was a successful AIDS researcher. This prompted Mullis to come up with deranged, delusional theories that AIDS is not caused by the HIV virus. And rant about Fauci.

If that is not insane enough: Mullis describes his encounters with extraterrestrials in the shape of fluorescent racoons.

BTW, the conspiracy video site - you call them 'fact checkers' - that you linked to also has videos that 'prove' that Trump is indeed Q (from the QAnon conspiracy), blatantly antisemitic and anti islamic content, racist videos, true stories of the US senate approving human-animal hybrids (as in Sweet Tooth, but for real..), comparative machine gun reviews, proof the Trump won by millions, upcoming Transhuman slave markets, Jesus clones, magnetic food, flat earth,...

Thank you for your valuable contribution.

Mic 1972 · 08-06-2021 3:00pm

Unicorn Milk Latte wrote: »

Wow. Kary Mullis again.
As a 'source' to discredit Fauci. Again. Seriously?????

Mullis passed away before Covid started.

He was, once, decades ago, a scientist who won a Nobel prize.

Then he succumbed to mental illness, either in combination of, or caused by, severe drug abuse.

The context of his comments about Fauci: while Mullis had not done any real research in decades, Fauci was a successful AIDS researcher. This prompted Mullis to come up with deranged, delusional theories that AIDS is not caused by the HIV virus. And rant about Fauci.

If that is not insane enough: Mullis describes his encounters with extraterrestrials in the shape of fluorescent racoons.

BTW, the conspiracy video site - you call them 'fact checkers' - that you linked to also has videos that 'prove' that Trump is indeed Q (from the QAnon conspiracy), blatantly antisemitic and anti islamic content, racist videos, true stories of the US senate approving human-animal hybrids (as in Sweet Tooth, but for real..), comparative machine gun reviews, proof the Trump won by millions, upcoming Transhuman slave markets, Jesus clones, magnetic food, flat earth,...

Thank you for your valuable contribution.

congrats on you little google search. Google makes it easy for those who want to spread lies on respected people who just happen to disagree with the mainstream narrative

this is your source https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/technology-history/man-who-photocopied-dna-and-also-saw-talking-fluorescent-raccoon

banie01 · 08-06-2021 3:05pm

Mic 1972 wrote: »

Bottom line, you can't proof that Trump made it up.
Trump jumped to conclusions using common sense and he landed very close to a likely truth

There is a post from me earlier on this thread that does just that.
The evidence gathered and the conclusions shaped by the team stood up under the Trump admin have been binned as unreliable and overly Politicised by the Biden Admin.

If any of the evidence Trump based his and Pompeo's claims on stood up to the sniff test it would have been released nearly immediately.
The opportunity to lay blame and hold China accountable is too great a chance to miss.

The new investigation is a "clean slate" with purportedly no carry over from the original that isn't verifiable and able to stand scrutiny.

Trigger · 08-06-2021 3:06pm

Mic 1972 wrote: »

congrats on you little google search. Google makes it easy for those who want to spread lies on respected people who just happen to disagree with the mainstream narrative

this is your source https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/technology-history/man-who-photocopied-dna-and-also-saw-talking-fluorescent-raccoon

The Source is himself, in his own book - Dancing Naked in the Mine Field

at the far end of the path, under a fir tree, there was something glowing. I pointed my flashlight at it anyhow. It only made it whiter where the beam landed. It seemed to be a raccoon. I wasn’t frightened. Later, I wondered if it could have been a hologram, projected from God knows where.”

“The raccoon spoke. ‘Good evening, doctor,’ it said. I said something back, I don’t remember what, probably, ‘Hello.’ The next thing I remember, it was early in the morning. I was walking along a road uphill from my house.”

geospatial · 08-06-2021 3:11pm

mcsean2163 wrote: »

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-report-concluded-covid-19-may-have-leaked-from-wuhan-lab-11623106982

WSJ discusses 2020 report from Z Division stating lab leak plausible.

This confirms what I speculated on yesterday, that if LLNL did a study and issued a report it would be based on a genomics analysis. So we have a group of researchers who are experts on genomics claiming a lab leak hypothesis is plausible and needs further investigation. The report was issued in May so they had four months to study the genome, in contrast with the opinion issued by Kristian Anderson that concluded "our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 was not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus" based on a few weeks analysis (that contradicted their earlier analysis).

I'm afraid this is another nail in the coffin for the narrative that the scientific consensus was the virus came from natural origin. The scientific consensus is looking more and more like it came from one individual who was desperate to deflect attention from the WIV.

banie01 · 08-06-2021 3:18pm

mcsean2163 wrote: »

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-report-concluded-covid-19-may-have-leaked-from-wuhan-lab-11623106982

WSJ discusses 2020 report from Z Division stating lab leak plausible.

I don't think anyone is disputing that a lab leak is at least plausible.

The issues that are at hand, in my mind least amount to identifying the origin of the virus, and consequently the source of the outbreak.

1. Do you and others believe this is a De Novo virus?
2. If it is believed to be a created virus? Do you and others believe it is deliberately weaponised?
3. Do you consider it possible that this virus may have been collected in the wild? That it was under investigation in WIV and leaked via accident?
4. Do you believe that the release is deliberate?
5. Do you consider that of this a De Novo virus, that is deliberately released. That it is a De facto breach of the biological weapons convention and that it would be an act of war?
There has been talk of reparations, but the simple truth is that if this an engineered virus and release, that China has commited an act of war and global harm.

Given those potential consequences, surely even the most ardent Conspiracy Theorist would agree that "common sense" or coincidence are far from enough evidence to lay direct blame?

Evidence of the virus origin and evidence of its emergence and transmission are needed before blame of potentially Armageddon triggering weight is lain.

geospatial · 08-06-2021 3:20pm

banie01 wrote: »

The opportunity to lay blame and hold China accountable is too great a chance to miss.

You have to wonder why he didn't declassify the Lawrence Livermore study which (if we believe the reporting) reported in May of 2020 that a lab leak was plausible. Maybe he didn't see it or it was hidden from him? It's a strange one because as you say he wasn't likely to stay quiet about it, every time he opened his mouth he was likely to reveal something classified.

banie01 · 08-06-2021 3:24pm

geospatial wrote: »

You have to wonder why he didn't declassify the Lawrence Livermore study which (if we believe the reporting) reported in May of 2020 that a lab leak was plausible. Maybe he didn't see it or it was hidden from him? It's a strange one because as you say he wasn't likely to stay quiet about it, every time he opened his mouth he was likely to reveal something classified.

Plausible isn't a conclusion.
Plausible isn't evidence and as such there is very little regarding a potential leak that is implausible.

Presenting a thought that it may be a leak, without an evidential basis to back that up is scientifically valid both as a possibility and a path for investigation.
Presenting that as actual evidence of a leak?
Isn't.

geospatial · 08-06-2021 3:30pm

banie01 wrote: »

I don't think anyone is disputing that a lab leak is at least plausible.

The issues that are at hand, in my mind least amount to identifying the origin of the virus, and consequently the source of the outbreak.

1. Do you and others believe this is a De Novo virus?
2. If it is believed to be a created virus? Do you and others believe it is deliberately weaponised?
3. Do you consider it possible that this virus may have been collected in the wild? That it was under investigation in WIV and leaked via accident?
4. Do you believe that the release is deliberate?
5. Do you consider that of this a De Novo virus, that is deliberately released. That it is a De facto breach of the biological weapons convention and that it would be an act of war?
There has been talk of reparations, but the simple truth is that if this an engineered virus and release, that China has commited an act of war and global harm.

Given those potential consequences, surely even the most ardent Conspiracy Theorist would agree that "common sense" or coincidence are far from enough evidence to lay direct blame?

Evidence of the virus origin and evidence of its emergence and transmission are needed before blame of potentially Armageddon triggering weight is lain.

There is nothing in the genome that suggests it is de novo or built from scratch, and while synthetic versions of SARS-2 have been made they are based off the existing virus genome. So I would rule out a bioweapon.

If it came from the lab, the most likely explanation is that they collected a precursor of SARS-2 in a lab in Yunnan in 2013 and were doing gain of function research on it, and someone got infected. It's also possible they had a bat coronavirus that directly infected someone in the lab (a zoonotic transfer directly from a bat virus in the lab) and started a pandemic, but that is less likely.

geospatial · 08-06-2021 3:39pm

banie01 wrote: »

Plausible isn't a conclusion.

When it comes from Lawrence Livermore Z division, a plausible lab leak hypothesis is based on evidence. They would not issue a report if it did not have evidence. Do you think they just took a cursory look at the genome and said it looks like it could have come from a lab?

If you look back over this thread the claims of Kristian Anderson have been cited repeatedly as evidence of natural origin. Why would the opinion of one group of expert researchers who studied the genome for a few weeks be cited as evidence, but the opinion of a group of expert researchers who studied the genome for months not be evidence?

I am not saying you stated the "Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2 " correspondence was evidence, but many on this thread have.

Unicorn Milk Latte · 08-06-2021 5:22pm

Mic 1972 wrote: »

..easy for those who want to spread lies on respected people

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.

He has been instrumentalised by the conspiracy crowd for their Covid narrative. His words taken out of context, as in the linked video.

He passed before Covid started. He never, in his lifetime, said anything about Covid, or the PCR test for testing for Covid.

So, yes, spreading lies - by taking his words out of context - about a once highly respected person is abusive.

Mic 1972 · 08-06-2021 5:32pm

Trigger wrote: »

The Source is himself, in his own book - Dancing Naked in the Mine Field

yeah, the poster definitely went back to that book to get the quote
totally

what I'm saying is that if you want to discredit anyone who isn't mainstream then google is your best friend

Mic 1972 · 08-06-2021 5:34pm

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.

He has been instrumentalised by the conspiracy crowd for their Covid narrative. His words taken out of context, as in the linked video.

He passed before Covid started. He never, in his lifetime, said anything about Covid, or the PCR test for testing for Covid.

So, yes, spreading lies - by taking his words out of context - about a once highly respected person is abusive.

Between you and a Nobel Prize winner who do you think has more credibility?
Take a wild guess

King Mob · 08-06-2021 5:41pm

Mic 1972 wrote: »

Between you and a Nobel Prize winner who do you think has more credibility?
Take a wild guess

You are not understanding the argument it seems.
And it looks like you're clinging to an argument from authority.

Do you believe that HIV doesn't cause AIDS?

Kary Mullis said it didn't, so it must be true, right?

astrofool · 08-06-2021 5:53pm

geospatial wrote: »

When it comes from Lawrence Livermore Z division, a plausible lab leak hypothesis is based on evidence. They would not issue a report if it did not have evidence. Do you think they just took a cursory look at the genome and said it looks like it could have come from a lab?

If you look back over this thread the claims of Kristian Anderson have been cited repeatedly as evidence of natural origin. Why would the opinion of one group of expert researchers who studied the genome for a few weeks be cited as evidence, but the opinion of a group of expert researchers who studied the genome for months not be evidence?

I am not saying you stated the "Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2 " correspondence was evidence, but many on this thread have.

In this case (and without seeing the report) it seems unlikely, the administration in place would have jumped on any evidence they produced and made it public, it is possible that their detailed investigation went over the head of the officials and thus was ignored, but given what else leaked and the impact of any evidence if it was found, the chances are low that any evidence was produced. The Biden administration starting the investigation again supports this (and if the goal was to hide it, then they wouldn't have started another investigation).

This isn't to badmouth Z division, but the events of the time make it unlikely that they offered anything but an educated opinion.

Trigger · 08-06-2021 6:03pm

Mic 1972 wrote: »

yeah, the poster definitely went back to that book to get the quote
totally

what I'm saying is that if you want to discredit anyone who isn't mainstream then google is your best friend

What lies was the poster spreading though? You stated if you want to spread lies about something google is your friend and linked to the link you posted.

Unicorn Milk Latte · 08-06-2021 6:25pm

Mic 1972 wrote: »

yeah, the poster definitely went back to that book to get the quote
totally

You may have overlooked this: I provided the source - a link to the Kary Mullis Wikipedia page - in the original post. Embedded in the first mention of his name, no less.

The Wikipedia page has the racoon quote under the section for Mullis' 'Publications and Books'.

Mic 1972 · 08-06-2021 6:40pm

Unicorn Milk Latte wrote: »

You may have overlooked this: I provided the source - a link to the Kary Mullis Wikipedia page - in the original post. Embedded in the first mention of his name, no less.

The Wikipedia page has the racoon quote under the section for Mullis' 'Publications and Books'.

nevertheless I'm still pretty sure who I would chose to believe between a Trump hater on a board and a Nobel Price winner

PintOfView · 08-06-2021 6:45pm

Mic 1972 wrote: »

congrats on you little google search. Google makes it easy for those who want to spread lies on respected people who just happen to disagree with the mainstream narrative

this is your source https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/technology-history/man-who-photocopied-dna-and-also-saw-talking-fluorescent-raccoon

From a bit of Googling here is what I found out about Kary Mullis (feel free to point out inaccuracies)
- He was an accomplished chemist who shared a Nobel prize for inventing PCR tests
- PCR allows target DNA to be 'amplified' exponentially from a microscopic sample
- In 1996 Kary Mullis said “Quantitative PCR is an oxymoron” but he was saying this
in the context of testing viral load (the amount of virus present) in people with HIV.
- He was basically saying that PCR tests could not determine how much infections virus is present in a patient,
because the tests amplify the DNA so much it's not possible to say how much was there to start with.
- He died in Aug 2019 (before Covid was a thing)

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.

However Covid DNA is just DNA, same as HIV, and human DNA,
and it seems all can be amplified by PCR,
and so people claiming otherwise appear to be mistaken.

Google it yourself if you want to confirm or debunk my interpretation!

geospatial · 08-06-2021 6:59pm

astrofool wrote: »

This isn't to badmouth Z division, but the events of the time make it unlikely that they offered anything but an educated opinion.

An educated opinion from the Z division, with the resources they have at their disposal, is evidence. I think what's most likely is the intelligence community and the NIH had concluded it was natural origin by February, so it probably got ignored. I doubt it ever got to Trump as I agree he would have blabbed about it.

There are numerous developments which prompted the Biden investigation, the letter from 18 scientists specifically calling for a lab origin investigation, the fact that several of those who signed the Daszak letter in Feb 2020 have changed their minds, the reporting on the Yunnan miners from 2012, the clear misleading info from the WIV on the viruses they were studying in Jan 2020 that was partially cleared up in Nov 2020, the reaction of 14 governments and the WHO director general himself to the recent investigation, and nothing being found in a year and a half to support natural origin.

So in terms of evidence (and it is all circumstantial so far), the ledger on the side of lab origin has been growing steadily and the ledger on the side of natural origin has stood still. You also have more and more scientists coming out expressing doubt about natural origin or even openly suggesting lab origin. Bernard Roizman, University of Chicago Virologist: "I am convinced that what happened was the virus was brought to a lab, they started to work on it.. and some sloppy individual carried it out. They can't admit they did something so stupid". That's a hell of a 180 from signing the Lancet letter a year ago.

patnor1011 · 08-06-2021 7:09pm

astrofool wrote: »

As a simple example, cancer is usually diagnosed by a lab, not by symptoms.

What make you go to the doctor and lab?
Usually symptoms.

astrofool · 08-06-2021 7:12pm

patnor1011 wrote: »

What make you go to the doctor and lab?
Usually symptoms.

This is a weird comment. You have heard of screening programs? Or are they just a construct to control people?

astrofool · 08-06-2021 7:15pm

geospatial wrote: »

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

Sorry, but this is 100% not evidence, if there was evidence, there is a very high chance (but not 100%) we would have seen it, that's the only wiggle room here. The Biden administration saying they're starting again also strongly implies they had no evidence from the previous administration.

Trigger · 08-06-2021 7:16pm

patnor1011 wrote: »

What make you go to the doctor and lab?
Usually symptoms.

Yes but the symptoms do not confirm diagnosis.

Just because a woman is late and is getting sick does not mean she knows for sure that she is pregnant. That would be confirmed through further tests

patnor1011 · 08-06-2021 7:29pm

astrofool wrote: »

This is a weird comment. You have heard of screening programs? Or are they just a construct to control people?

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.

patnor1011 · 08-06-2021 7:32pm

Trigger wrote: »

Yes but the symptoms do not confirm diagnosis.

Just because a woman is late and is getting sick does not mean she knows for sure that she is pregnant. That would be confirmed through further tests

Where did I say anything different? Symptoms are enough to send you to the doctor who would send samples to lab. As other poster said it is how medicine used to work up until now.

geospatial · 08-06-2021 7:41pm

astrofool wrote: »

Sorry, but this is 100% not evidence, if there was evidence, there is a very high chance (but not 100%) we would have seen it, that's the only wiggle room here. The Biden administration saying they're starting again also strongly implies they had no evidence from the previous administration.

The claim regarding the WIV researchers who fell ill, which according to the Biden White House came from another government (so Trump didn't make it up although obviously capable of such), was publicly disclosed on January 15th so obviously the prior administration knew about it. Whether it's based on good or bad evidence is a separate question, but clearly it's based on some evidence.

The opinion of the Z division based on studying the SARS-CoV-2 genome is evidence, and their opinion was lab origin is plausible. We can only speculate on why we didn't know about it up to now, but it was classified as top secret so any government official leaking it would have been subject to criminal charges and any senior politician leaking it subject to impeachment. That's why when there are leaks of classified information it's in general terms, like the recent source confirming the report exists and where it came from, but not revealing the contents. There's actually a very low chance we would have seen it, we get to see very little classified intelligence.

Anyway we're beating a dead horse at this point, time to move on.

astrofool · 08-06-2021 9:08pm

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.

banie01 · 08-06-2021 9:32pm

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?

Unicorn Milk Latte · 08-06-2021 10:05pm

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.

geospatial · 08-06-2021 10:20pm

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

Dohnjoe · 09-06-2021 3:02pm

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.

geospatial · 09-06-2021 6:28pm

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

Dohnjoe · 09-06-2021 7:30pm

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?

geospatial · 09-06-2021 8:17pm

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/

Dohnjoe · 09-06-2021 8:34pm

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

geospatial · 09-06-2021 9:44pm

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.

Dohnjoe · 10-06-2021 8:58am

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

patnor1011 · 10-06-2021 10:10am

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

geospatial · 10-06-2021 5:11pm

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.

Igotadose · 10-06-2021 6:15pm

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.

mcsean2163 · 11-06-2021 8:52pm

Guardian trying to make up for their misreporting.

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

geospatial · 12-06-2021 5:49pm

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

Unicorn Milk Latte · 13-06-2021 12:14am

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.

banie01 · 14-06-2021 1:29pm

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

geospatial · 14-06-2021 5:07pm

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.

mcsean2163 · 15-06-2021 12:49am

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?

Covid-19 likely to be man made

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