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China lab leak unlikely
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dancingqueen




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Feb 09 2021, 3:42 pm
SixOfWands wrote:
Well, then, please point to every piece of science supporting your claim that the virus originated in a lab.

SCIENCE, not conspiracy theories.

Not, well, the WHO said it, so we know its wrong.

The office of the US national intelligence director said in April 2020 that the virus was not man-made or genetically modified. See, eg, https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/3......html If you disagree, please cite scientific evidence supporting your contention.

That of course leaves the possibility of inadvertant or purposeful release of a naturally occurring virus. What evidence do you have of that? EVIDENCE. Not speculation.


I found this pretty compelling and I’m not a conspiracy theorist. https://www.bostonmagazine.com.....irus/
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amother
OP


 

Post Tue, Feb 09 2021, 3:47 pm
dancingqueen wrote:
I found this pretty compelling and I’m not a conspiracy theorist. https://www.bostonmagazine.com.....irus/

It is an interesting article. I don’t believe she’s right, given other evidence, but still a good read.
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amother
Oak


 

Post Tue, Feb 09 2021, 3:59 pm
It doesn’t make a difference if it was from a lab or not. Let’s say it was. It was leaked accidentally. Oops. China is the same to blame as if it came from a bat and then spread. China is to blame for making a mistake either way.

The amount of effort making sure nobody thinks it from a lab makes me wonder why.

The only real difference would be if china unleashed the virus on the world purposely. That would make a difference.
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amother
OP


 

Post Tue, Feb 09 2021, 4:09 pm
amother [ Oak ] wrote:
It doesn’t make a difference if it was from a lab or not. Let’s say it was. It was leaked accidentally. Oops. China is the same to blame as if it came from a bat and then spread. China is to blame for making a mistake either way.

The amount of effort making sure nobody thinks it from a lab makes me wonder why.

The only real difference would be if china unleashed the virus on the world purposely. That would make a difference.

I agree with you that there are reasons it doesn’t really matter right now, and China is to blame either way. However, there are implications for infectious disease research, lab safety measures, bioterrorism, et cetera, so it’s important to know the real origins.
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amother
Powderblue


 

Post Tue, Feb 09 2021, 5:09 pm
amother [ OP ] wrote:
I don’t really understand what you mean. Scientists found that the same strain from NYC was in Europe, different from the one in China. There is a very large amount of travel from Europe into NY area.

Just because the virus may have mutated doesnt mean that it didnt originally come from China.
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amother
Puce


 

Post Tue, Feb 09 2021, 5:34 pm
Thank you dancing queen. Wow that is a very powerful article.
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amother
Pink


 

Post Tue, Feb 09 2021, 5:43 pm
China has many labs studying existing viruses and not enough is invested in safety. FYI I'm not a conspiracy theorist, this makes sense.
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amother
OP


 

Post Tue, Feb 09 2021, 5:50 pm
amother [ Powderblue ] wrote:
Just because the virus may have mutated doesnt mean that it didnt originally come from China.

Absolutely. I think I wasn’t clear. It originated in China, spread across the world undetected early on, and people traveling mostly from Europe brought it to NYC. I think the strains that showed in WA initially were directly from China.
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cbsp




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Feb 09 2021, 6:10 pm
amother [ OP ] wrote:
It is an interesting article. I don’t believe she’s right, given other evidence, but still a good read.


What other evidence? I'm starting to doubt all peers that review...
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amother
OP


 

Post Tue, Feb 09 2021, 6:33 pm
cbsp wrote:
What other evidence? I'm starting to doubt all peers that review...

https://www.nature.com/article.....820-9
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cbsp




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Feb 09 2021, 7:39 pm
amother [ OP ] wrote:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9


She challenged the nature article and it doesn't seem that they had a good rebuttal.

From the boston article:

"Remarkably, one group of authors in Nature even appeared to use the same genetic sequences from the other paper as if it were confirmation of their own discovery. “These sequences appear to be from the same virus (Pangolin-CoV) that we identified in the present study.”

Chan called them out on Twitter: “Of course it’s the same Pangolin-CoV, you used the same dataset!” For context, she later added, “Imagine if clinical trials were playing fast and loose with their patient data; renaming patients, throwing them into different datasets without clarification, possibly even describing the same patient multiple times across different studies unintentionally.” "

I'm no scientist so I'm sure I'm missing more than a little something, but I found this fascinatingly disturbing:

When word spread in January that a novel coronavirus had caused an outbreak in Wuhan—which is a thousand miles from where the bats that carry this lineage of viruses are naturally found—many experts were quietly alarmed. There was no proof that the lab was the source of the virus, but the pieces fit.

Despite the evidence, the scientific community quickly dismissed the idea. Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, which has funded the work of the Wuhan Institute of Virology and other labs searching for new viruses, called the notion “preposterous,” and many other experts echoed that sentiment.

That wasn’t necessarily what every scientist thought in private, though. “They can’t speak directly,” one scientist told me confidentially, referring to the virology community’s fear of having their comments sensationalized in today’s politically charged environment. “Many virologists don’t want to be hated by everyone in the field.”

There are other potential reasons for the pushback. There’s long been a sense that if the public and politicians really knew about the dangerous pathogen research being conducted in many laboratories, they’d be outraged. Denying the possibility of a catastrophic incident like this, then, could be seen as a form of career preservation. “For the substantial subset of virologists who perform gain-of-function research,” Richard Ebright, a Rutgers microbiologist and another founding member of the Cambridge Working Group, told me, “avoiding restrictions on research funding, avoiding implementation of appropriate biosafety standards, and avoiding implementation of appropriate research oversight are powerful motivators.” Antonio Regalado, biomedicine editor of MIT Technology Review, put it more bluntly. If it turned out COVID-19 came from a lab, he tweeted, “it would shatter the scientific edifice top to bottom.”

That’s a pretty good incentive to simply dismiss the whole hypothesis, but it quickly amounted to a global gaslighting of the media—and, by proxy, the public. An unhealthy absolutism set in: Either you insisted that any questions about lab involvement were absurd, or you were a tool of the Trump administration and its desperation to blame China for the virus. I was used to social media pundits ignoring inconvenient or politically toxic facts, but I’d never expected to see that from some of our best scientists.


I found this perspective astonishing (especially in light of other political goings-on - everything is interpreted - on either side - by one's initial premise):

He also says that a great lab, with great scientists, is now being picked apart to search for suspicious behavior to support a preconceived theory. “If you believe, deep down, something fishy went on, then what you do is you go through all the evidence and you try to look for things that support that belief,” he says, adding, “That is not how you find the truth.”

(what's interesting to me is that Chan wasn't trying to find something fishy. She just chose not to ignore her findings.)

This summary was also interesting:

To this day, there is no definitive evidence as to whether the virus occurred naturally or had its origins in a lab, but the hypothesis that the Wuhan facility was the source is increasingly mainstream and the science behind it can no longer be ignored. And Chan is largely to thank for that.
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amother
Pumpkin


 

Post Tue, Feb 09 2021, 8:31 pm
And we beleive the WHO and China because......why? Because they just jailed a female australian journalist for questioning that in a single post and will not release her back home? Because the Wuhan lab has had multiple leaks before? Because there were nobel prize winning scientists at the beginning saying it has to be a leak and therefore do not beleive them? Because WHO has conflict of interest? I think some people forget that China is a communist country.

And why does it even matter? Gladly will sell a bridge to those who believe the bats, but still, it does not matter. If it was the lab, intentional or not, a world war could ensue, so many countries knee deep in research with that lab, did I mention that lab has had multiple leaks before? Maybe these labs should be outlawed because they are too dangerous? Oh, forgot, Obama put a stop to it so Fauci pulled fancy shtick to keep it going. Maybe biological war research is on par which nuclear, or anyone pro Iran developing their nuclear capabilities? Why is China different than Iran? Other than it is a better place for tourism & has cheap stuff?
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amother
Pink


 

Post Tue, Feb 09 2021, 8:38 pm
I think if it had been bats this would have come to humans beforehand, this seems more like they were studying the virus in a lab and they weren't careful and it leaked into the population.
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Laiya




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Feb 09 2021, 8:45 pm
SixOfWands wrote:
Well, then, please point to every piece of science supporting your claim that the virus originated in a lab.

SCIENCE, not conspiracy theories.

Not, well, the WHO said it, so we know its wrong.

The office of the US national intelligence director said in April 2020 that the virus was not man-made or genetically modified. See, eg, https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/3......html If you disagree, please cite scientific evidence supporting your contention.

That of course leaves the possibility of inadvertant or purposeful release of a naturally occurring virus. What evidence do you have of that? EVIDENCE. Not speculation.


There's no complete evidence either way. Do you believe that the Chinese, in allowing the WHO researchers to conduct an investigation, were fully transparent? And if not, how valid are their findings?
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amother
Emerald


 

Post Tue, May 18 2021, 6:41 pm
So anyone want to back down now that the mainstream media is admitting it can actually be from a lab? Hmmm
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shaqued_almond




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, May 18 2021, 7:59 pm
It originated in china but that doesn't mean it came from a lab
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shaqued_almond




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, May 18 2021, 8:01 pm
amother [ Pink ] wrote:
I think if it had been bats this would have come to humans beforehand, this seems more like they were studying the virus in a lab and they weren't careful and it leaked into the population.


It did. Google SARS. That's why there was a lab because they knew bats can carry coronaviruses.
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avrahamama




 
 
    
 

Post Mon, May 31 2021, 1:51 pm
This thread is aging well
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amother
Tangerine


 

Post Mon, May 31 2021, 1:56 pm
avrahamama wrote:
This thread is aging well


Yep, poor poor poor media. They had no way out of the hole they dug themselves into, so they had to publicly apologize and admit that they so readily dismissed the idea just because it was Trump who suggested it.

Oh, I feel so bad they had to admit to their true colors.
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amother
Burgundy


 

Post Mon, May 31 2021, 2:03 pm
amother [ Tangerine ] wrote:
Yep, poor poor poor media. They had no way out of the hole they dug themselves into, so they had to publicly apologize and admit that they so readily dismissed the idea just because it was Trump who suggested it.

Oh, I feel so bad they had to admit to their true colors.


You think it was Trumps suggestion that it came from the lab?
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