Da Corona

[Kulaf]

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/06 ... 9s-origins

[Ddrak]

Source on that "ton of scientific evidence"?

Evidence that it wasn't engineered? All over the place:

https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/ ... f-covid-19
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7396141/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7095345/

...among a few thousand other hits from science journals all over the place.

Now, I will concede that it's possible a non-engineered virus escaped from a lab, across town to the wet market, and seemingly nowhere else. But it's far more possible that the wet market just spread it all by itself without needing a virology lab across town. Viruses cross from animals to humans all the time (see SARS, MERS, Ebola, HIV, etc.) so it's very, very plausible this is exactly the same as pretty much every previous pandemic we've seen.

China's always been pissy about investigating the source, way before this lab leak thing took root in the US. Australia's been on the shitlist for the last 18 months for pushing it. Glad to see they are consistent in that at least.

Dd

[Kulaf]

I've never said it was "engineered", that's just a strawman. You can go all the way back to my original post of the Fox News article to see that.

The theory was that it accidentally escaped from a lab in China.

Also, I just want to point out that the Wuhan Institute of Virology is not "across town" from the wet market, it is literally 200m away.

[Kulaf]

My bad on the location of the WIV, I was thinking of the other building that houses the Chinese equivalent of the CDC.

[Kulaf]

https://www.oxfordstudent.com/2021/06/0 ... -research/

Joint research by WildCRU in partnership with China West Normal University, Nanchong, and Hubei University of Traditional Chinese medicine had been focussing on a tick borne disease in these markets since May 2017 and as a result was monitoring the animals traded there. The results of this research show that neither bats, nor pangolins were found in the Wuhan Market. These findings seem to suggest that “pangolins were not likely the spillover host at the source of the current coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic.

[Kulaf]

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/27/brie ... heory.html

The result, as Mr. Yglesias called it, was a bubble of fake consensus. Scientists who thought a lab leak was plausible received little attention. Scientists who thought the theory was wacky received widespread attention. It’s a good reminder: The world is a complicated place, where almost nobody is always right or always wrong.

Color me shocked, the NYT actually making some semblance of sense.

[Ddrak]

Gain of function research would be engineering, I'd have said? That's the piece I think is a real stretch. It would have markers all over it showing the modifications, as far as I understand the way that stuff works (which is not very well, though).

Escaping from a lab - yeah, it's possible. I'm not sure it's a very interesting distinction though, because that would mean it's something they've collected in the wild anyway. Most of the "escaped from a lab" drama comes from the subtly implied idea that it was something actually built in a lab as well.

Dd

[Kulaf]

My understanding of gain of function research is that it is basically "directed" natural selection. Basically, you leave only one path that the virus would need to mutate to in order to survive.

Engineering on the other hand would be replacing genetic code from one virus to another. That would leave markers.

[Kulaf]

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_app/t ... .html?v=ul

Medical journal The Lancet on June 21 updated a statement that it published in 2020 dubbing the hypothesis that COVID-19 may have originated from a lab in Wuhan, China, as a “conspiracy theory” as the possibility gains wider recognition.

During the onset of the pandemic, the “lab leak” theory was disputed in a statement published by a group of 27 scientists in the prestigious medical journal. Published on March 7 last year, that letter became one of the most influential documents in the early days of the pandemic that shaped the discussion on the origins of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.

Titled “Statement in support of the scientists, public health professionals, and medical professionals of China combatting COVID-19,” the letter stated: “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.

“Conspiracy theories do nothing but create fear, rumors, and prejudice that jeopardize our global collaboration in the fight against this virus,” the 27 scientists asserted.

In the science publication’s update on Monday, it declared that one of the leading virologists who had signed the original letter, U.S. researcher Peter Daszak, had failed to disclose “competing interests” as required by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors.

“In this letter, the authors declared no competing interests. Some readers have questioned the validity of this disclosure, particularly as it relates to one of the authors, Peter Daszak,” the update states.

The Lancet on Monday said that after it invited all 27 scientists to re-evaluate their competing interests, Daszak submitted an updated disclosure statement noting that his remuneration is paid solely in the form of a salary from EcoHealth Alliance, a New York-based nonprofit research foundation.

Daszak’s group, EcoHealth Alliance, has worked directly with China’s Wuhan laboratories to research coronaviruses. The group has sent federal funds to support gain-of-function research at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) where the have since been reports of potentially the first COVID-19 cases detected in late 2019.

Daszak’s organization in the past had received $3.7 million in funding from Dr. Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), at least $600,000 of which was sent to the WIV.

Gain-of-function research includes techniques used to alter the genetic content of a virus to study it under different conditions, including viruses with greater resistance to vaccines, more rapid spread among victims, as well as understanding the specific symptoms that victims would develop.

Daszak has since been removed from The Lancet’s COVID-19 commission following the revelations.

Separately, the EcoHealth Alliance president this month backtracked on earlier denials that live bats had never been housed at the WIV, after Australian investigative reporter Sharri Markson reported on footage from inside the facility dated in May 2017.

Titled “The construction and research team of Wuhan P4 laboratory of Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences,” the 10-minute footage is an official Chinese Academy of Sciences video that was released to mark the launch of the WIV, and shows bats being held in a cage at the laboratory, as well as a clip of a scientist feeding a bat with a worm.

Daszak as recently as December 2020 said that the claim that bats were kept at the facility was a “widely circulated conspiracy” and that he hopes it’s an “error” in reporting that will be “corrected.

“No BATS were sent to Wuhan lab for genetic analysis of viruses collected in the field. That’s now how this science works. We collect bat samples, send them to the lab. We RELEASE bats where we catch them!” Daszak said on Twitter in December last year.

Daszak has now admitted that the WIV may have housed bats and that he had not asked them to confirm his previous comments, Markson on Sky News reported.

It comes as calls for a probe into the origins of the CCP virus have intensified in recent weeks as the hypothesis that the virus could have been the product of experiments at WIV receives wider recognition.

Dr. Peter Palese, a microbiologist at New York’s Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital, and one of 27 virologists who signed the March 7 letter, has now backtracked and says an investigation into the origins of COVID-19 is needed.

“I believe a thorough investigation about the origin of the COVID-19 virus is needed,” Palese told the Daily Mail. “A lot of disturbing information has surfaced since the Lancet letter I signed, so I want to see answers covering all questions.”

Meanwhile, signatory Bernard Roizman, a University of Chicago professor, told the Wall Street Journal that he believes “the virus was brought to a lab, they started to work with it … and some sloppy individual brought it out,” claiming that its personnel “can’t admit they did something so stupid.”

David Asher, a former State Department contractor who helped lead an investigation into the origins of the CCP virus said last month that the virus likely came from the WIV.

“It came out of nowhere, and it was optimized for transmission between humans in a way that no bat-borne coronavirus ever had been,” Asher said.

President Joe Biden on May 26 ordered the U.S. intelligence community to conduct an assessment with a 90-day deadline.

[Kulaf]

https://www.the-sun.com/news/3132603/br ... ry-sacked/

Dr Peter Daszak has been ousted from the UN-backed Lancet probe as he has repeatedly attempted to dismiss allegations the virus could have escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).

...

Dr Daszak was part of the much derided WHO investigation which visited Wuhan early this year, only to have its findings dismissed as a "whitewash" and then be undermined by WHO's director on the same day as its release.

[Ddrak]

I will first say that any publication calling it "the CCP virus" automatically gives away extreme bias (not that the Epoch Times was ever anything but extremely biased in China news). nCoV2019 is the name of the virus, and COVID-19 is the name of the disease.

I'll say secondly that recusing one statement from a group of 27 doesn't really weaken it. Makes good news sales, I guess.

All they have is that there's a chance that it could have been released from the WIV, and a much larger chance it came from a market. Developing that into some story about "gain-of-function" research in a global conspiracy is just not there. It's cherry picking data points to make a narrative. With those tenuous links you may as well credit the actual CCP story that US servicemen visiting Wuhan planted it, after all they were there and then the virus turned up, right?

Happy to wait until Biden gets an updated response from the intel agencies and see if they have anything new to say.

Dd

[Kulaf]

Except that the one guy was the guy who pushed for the letter.

[Kulaf]

https://twitter.com/i/status/1410222085281128454

[Ddrak]

GOP Lawmakers find evidence of conspiracy after forming their own private investigation and cherry picking experts. Colour me shocked!

Intel report should be out in a month or so - it's the least likely to be partisan. Most of the reports I'm seeing are still saying it's a natural virus that probably spread itself, with a possibility of lab escape that's unlikely but can't be directly ruled out.

Dd

[Kulaf]

I point you back to :

http://brellrants.com/forum/viewtopic.p ... 95#p547595

Just a coincidence that Xi issues a directive moving virus research under the control of the military in Feb of 2020 after a virus "doesn't" escape from a virology lab in China.

[Garrdor]

Jobless. Hopeless. Was an essential worker that got paid garbage. Music career put on hold because of no shows. Waiting for the collapse of society. Yay.

[Kulaf]

https://theintercept.com/2021/09/06/new ... inese-lab/

NEWLY RELEASED DOCUMENTS provide details of U.S.-funded research on several types of coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. The Intercept has obtained more than 900 pages of documents detailing the work of EcoHealth Alliance, a U.S.-based health organization that used federal money to fund bat coronavirus research at the Chinese laboratory. The trove of documents includes two previously unpublished grant proposals that were funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, as well as project updates relating to EcoHealth Alliance’s research, which has been scrutinized amid increased interest in the origins of the pandemic.

One of the grants, titled “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence,” outlines an ambitious effort led by EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak to screen thousands of bat samples for novel coronaviruses. The research also involved screening people who work with live animals. The documents contain several critical details about the research in Wuhan, including the fact that key experimental work with humanized mice was conducted at a biosafety level 3 lab at Wuhan University Center for Animal Experiment — and not at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, as was previously assumed. The documents raise additional questions about the theory that the pandemic may have begun in a lab accident, an idea that Daszak has aggressively dismissed.

The bat coronavirus grant provided EcoHealth Alliance with a total of $3.1 million, including $599,000 that the Wuhan Institute of Virology used in part to identify and alter bat coronaviruses likely to infect humans.

Alina Chan, a molecular biologist at the Broad Institute, said the documents show that EcoHealth Alliance has reason to take the lab-leak theory seriously. “In this proposal, they actually point out that they know how risky this work is. They keep talking about people potentially getting bitten — and they kept records of everyone who got bitten,” Chan said. “Does EcoHealth have those records? And if not, how can they possibly rule out a research-related accident?”

According to Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University, the documents contain critical information about the research done in Wuhan, including about the creation of novel viruses. “The viruses they constructed were tested for their ability to infect mice that were engineered to display human type receptors on their cell,” Ebright wrote to The Intercept after reviewing the documents.

Ebright also said the documents make it clear that two different types of novel coronaviruses were able to infect humanized mice. “While they were working on SARS-related coronavirus, they were carrying out a parallel project at the same time on MERS-related coronavirus,” Ebright said, referring to the virus that causes Middle East Respiratory Syndrome.

The grant was initially awarded for a five-year period — from 2014 to 2019. Funding was renewed in 2019 but suspended by the Trump administration in April 2020.

[Kulaf]

Here is a link to a quick map I did showing the distance from the Huanan Seafood Market to the Wuhan University Medical College Animal Experiment Center:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SdrebR ... sp=sharing

It is literally 28 minutes from ground zero.

[Ddrak]

Pretty much all of Wuhan is in 28 mins of the market - that's not exactly convincing.

Screenshot 2021-09-08 192508.png

However, I did say I'd wait for the Intelligence Community assessment, which is here: https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/document ... rigins.pdf

Basically, they say it probably wasn't from a lab, but not ruling it out. (essentially a 4 to 1 split, with 3 abstaining).

Also, they say China's government definitely didn't know about the virus before the outbreak, probably not genetically engineered and definitely not a bioweapon. China is almost certainly not going to cooperate because they don't know the outcome of an external investigation and don't trust other nations to not use it for political pressure.

Given the resources of the US Intelligence Agencies, I doubt we'll find anything more certain than that.

Dd

[Ddrak]

I should add that it's interesting that Mara Hvistendahl was a co-author on that Intercept piece, when she previously wrote this one: https://theintercept.com/2021/06/19/lab ... -virology/

Not sure what to think of The Intercept these days. It started well, but I've found Greenwald going a bit weird over the last few years.

Dd