The natives are traumatized. They have been conquered by almost every European empire.
Most people here are quite vocal. Unfortunately it's the nasty ones we remember.
I met a lot of friendly people today.

Unfortunately it's the nasty ones we remember. — TaySan

True. It's better to remember the friendly ones though. Then when you get bitter about humanity, you can say, "oh yea, there was that guy..."

:up:

I started reading this thread from the beginning. Some posts have not aged well. — James Riley

Well count my first responses in that category! Benkei, like in and others put me into line that this was something serious and I was downplaying the risks. Yet that was on page 4, so it wasn't yet the age of the official pandemic and lockdowns.

I've always appreciated the intelligence and awareness of my fellow PF members. :up:

That's a breath of fresh air. So many folks like to double down.

If it turns out to be a Deep State Q plan to get us lined out with social passports, opening the door to gun control, I would hope I have the integrity to say I was wrong. On the other hand, I don't really know what the hell is going on. I threw my lot in for the brand and I'm riding for it. So far it seems like a fair call.

Thanks for linking to the channel4 article. Unfortunately I expect we will see more reports like that.

Thanks for linking to the channel4 article. Unfortunately I expect we will see more reports like that. — Punshhh

A pleasure and thanks for keeping your finger on the pulse (Brexit too).
Ch4 News online is an easy way of keeping in touch with its short vids from the programme itself.
https://www.channel4.com/news/

Just looked - and there are 3 x 4 min ones concerning India.
1. https://www.channel4.com/news/500000-to-900000-covid-cases-a-day-in-india-virologist-shahid-jameel
2. https://www.channel4.com/news/indian-government-hellbent-on-hiding-real-numbers-says-investigative-journalist-rana-ayyub-on-covid-19-carnage
3. https://www.channel4.com/news/whats-happening-in-india-can-happen-anywhere-in-the-world-whos-dr-margaret-harris


One of 5 mins which I will avoid - thinking of my high blood pressure.

Boris Johnson has denied saying last autumn that he would rather let the “bodies pile high” than have another lockdown after the latest in a series of leaks that have rocked Downing Street.

https://www.channel4.com/news/boris-johnson-denies-covid-bodies-pile-high-comment

More to come for sure. But I will leave the links here for now.
Others interested can follow Ch4 as and when...

Thanks again @Punshhh :sparkle:

Living so close to the US CDC I thought I'd share this bit of Friday happy hour blues – not "news", (really) just more of the same:

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-briefs/sars-cov-2-transmission.html

(With or without a vaxx) *Mask it or Casket it*, peeps.

:mask:

p.s. My condolences to those bereaved by the unnecessary ongoing atrocity abetted by the elites and governments of South Asia, particularly India. (Modi & Bolsonaro, Bojo & TR45H, Xi & Putin should be hanged by the neck till they are dead in broad daylight asap.)

Seems that the Lab-leak hypothesis is finally getting some interest in the correct circles:

(BBC) US President Joe Biden has ordered intelligence officials to "redouble" efforts to investigate the origins of Covid-19, including the theory that it came from a laboratory in China.

He said the US intelligence community was split on whether it came from a lab accident or emerged from human contact with an infected animal. Mr Biden asked the groups to report back to him within 90 days.

China has rejected the laboratory theory.

See Covid: Biden orders investigation into virus origin as lab leak theory debated

I think a lot of people in the media dismissed too easily the lab leak hypothesis because Trump had floated the idea. Now some media outlets are backpedalling for the hypothesis to be a "genuine possibility". Interesting to see what happens. What is sure is that it won't be an easy case to solve China will deny it in any case. Likely it will end up as a myth and historians perhaps 100 years from now will be in agreement about the issue.

(Perhaps a country like Norway might be so honest that if it would have been their laboratory where the virus broke out, they would would say: "Ooops, sorry about that." And, oh boy, the demands and the trials for compensation from the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth funds!)

There is an important distinction to be made. Determining that it came from a lab still does not tell us if it is natural or synthetic in origin. It might have been from contact with an infected animal or from the virus extracted from the animal or from something manufactured in the lab.

There are related questions such as whether the research was being done to understand viruses or to create and protect against biological or biochemical weapons.

Possible, I suspect the biological weapon hypothesis. Something like flu as a weapon is simply stupid. The Japanese that actually used biological weapons against the Chinese had quite a few of their own soldiers killed by their own "weapons".

(Unit 731: These Japanese were really up to no good during WW2)


More likely alternative is that this is just gain-of-function research, as corona-virus was studied at the Wuhan lab and China has had it share of corona outbreaks before, so it's obvious to prepare for corona outbreaks:

The Wuhan Institute of Virology has studied bat coronaviruses for years and their potential to ultimately infect humans, under the direction of scientist Shi Zhengli, as the Scientific American explained in a June 2020 story. Such zoonotic transfer — meaning transmission of a virus from an animal to a human — of coronaviruses occurred with the SARS and MERS coronaviruses, which led to global outbreaks in 2003 and 2012. Both viruses are thought to have started in bats, and then transferred into humans through intermediate animals — civets and racoon dogs, in the case of SARS, and camels in the case of MERS.

And with a twist that got the US politics involved:

In 2014, the NIH awarded a grant to the U.S.-based EcoHealth Alliance to study the risk of the future emergence of coronaviruses from bats. In 2019, the project was renewed for another five years, but it was canceled in April 2020 — three months after the first case of the coronavirus was confirmed in the U.S.

EcoHealth ultimately received $3.7 million over six years from the NIH and distributed nearly $600,000 of that total to China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology, a collaborator on the project, pre-approved by NIH.

The grant cancellation came at a time when then-President Donald Trump and others questioned the U.S. funding to a lab in Wuhan, while exaggerating the amount of federal money involved.

See article here

If we just remember that the lab-leak is only a hypothesis, but a very credible one, the most likely issue is totally accidental outbreak, which may even have gone unnoticed. Corona-virus isn't like the bubonic plague: that might too start with a fever, but when those swollen lymph nodes, you know it isn't "just a flew" and for any doctor will observe that. Remember how long lasted period when there was a "strange flew" going on?

Let's say you are a lab worker that has children in the daycare or school and you get a cold and it's flu season, do you first suspect a lab leak? Only when people are dead sure they have gotten infected, will the immediate exclusion start. How would the case number 1. know, if he or she didn't even have symptoms or very mild ones?

And of course there is the Wall Street article:

A Wall Street Journal report on Monday claimed that three researchers from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology were hospitalised after they were rendered sick in November 2019 “with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illness.” The report quoted US intelligence sources.

I'm not sure why Biden is looking into this. It's been established the virus is not engineered and I was under the impression the lab was for animal testing? Or is this information false?

I'm not sure why Biden is looking into this. It's been established the virus is not engineered and I was under the impression the lab was for animal testing? Or is this information false? — Benkei

The whole Covid-19 case seems very strange. I've just read in the news that many scientists are doubting China's official view of events but prefer to remain silent for fear of being associated with "conspiracy theories".

Even if the virus was not engineered it is still possible that it escaped from the lab. The regime's reaction by arresting scientists, lawyers, doctors, and pretty much anyone that merely talked about it evidently suggests that it has something to hide.

Even the WHO (normally pro-China) said that all possibilities are still being considered. And Dr Faucci who has been denying it all along has now apparently changed his mind. I think Biden is acting on pressure from the media and the scientific community, but there may also be political motives.

I've just read in the news that many scientists are doubting China's official view of events but prefer to remain silent for fear of being associated with "conspiracy theories". — Apollodorus

I think the reason is that one of the leading medical journals, The Lancet, published a condemnation of all "conspiracy theories" of possibility of a lab leak. Of course, the those totally rejecting one hypothesis at that moment when we don't know much, likely have something to hide. From the article Origin of Covid — Following the Clues by Nicholas Wade in New York Times :

From early on, public and media perceptions were shaped in favor of the natural emergence scenario by strong statements from two scientific groups. These statements were not at first examined as critically as they should have been.

“We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin,” a group of virologists and others wrote in the Lancet on February 19, 2020, when it was really far too soon for anyone to be sure what had happened. Scientists “overwhelmingly conclude that this coronavirus originated in wildlife,” they said, with a stirring rallying call for readers to stand with Chinese colleagues on the frontline of fighting the disease.

Contrary to the letter writers’ assertion, the idea that the virus might have escaped from a lab invoked accident, not conspiracy. It surely needed to be explored, not rejected out of hand. A defining mark of good scientists is that they go to great pains to distinguish between what they know and what they don’t know. By this criterion, the signatories of the Lancet letter were behaving as poor scientists: they were assuring the public of facts they could not know for sure were true.

It later turned out that the Lancet letter had been organized and drafted by Peter Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance of New York. Dr. Daszak’s organization funded coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. If the SARS2 virus had indeed escaped from research he funded, Dr. Daszak would be potentially culpable. This acute conflict of interest was not declared to the Lancet’s readers. To the contrary, the letter concluded, “We declare no competing interests.”

Virologists like Dr. Daszak had much at stake in the assigning of blame for the pandemic. For 20 years, mostly beneath the public’s attention, they had been playing a dangerous game. In their laboratories they routinely created viruses more dangerous than those that exist in nature. They argued they could do so safely, and that by getting ahead of nature they could predict and prevent natural “spillovers,” the cross-over of viruses from an animal host to people. If SARS2 had indeed escaped from such a laboratory experiment, a savage blowback could be expected, and the storm of public indignation would affect virologists everywhere, not just in China. “It would shatter the scientific edifice top to bottom,” an MIT Technology Review editor, Antonio Regalado, said in March 2020.

It's been established the virus is not engineered and I was under the impression the lab was for animal testing? — Benkei

Yes, there is the letter published in 17 March 2020 in the journal Nature Medicine led by Kristian G. Andersen, that said it's natural. Basically the argument was that because there aren't tell tale signs of cutting and pasting, it had to be natural. Unfortunately newer technologies don't leave those traces. So the article is wrong in ruling out the hypothesis.

I was under the impression the lab was for animal testing? — Benkei

Yep, putting corona-virus into humanized mice. Thanks to the Chinese asking for money from the US, they had to say just what exactly they were going to do. Hence I believe what Nicholas Wade writes in the article is true:

Dr. Baric had developed, and taught Dr. Shi, a general method for engineering bat coronaviruses to attack other species. The specific targets were human cells grown in cultures and humanized mice. These laboratory mice, a cheap and ethical stand-in for human subjects, are genetically engineered to carry the human version of a protein called ACE2 that studs the surface of cells that line the airways.

Dr. Shi returned to her lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and resumed the work she had started on genetically engineering coronaviruses to attack human cells. - Dr. Shi set out to create novel coronaviruses with the highest possible infectivity for human cells. Her plan was to take genes that coded for spike proteins possessing a variety of measured affinities for human cells, ranging from high to low. She would insert these spike genes one by one into the backbone of a number of viral genomes (“reverse genetics” and “infectious clone technology”), creating a series of chimeric viruses. These chimeric viruses would then be tested for their ability to attack human cell cultures (“in vitro”) and humanized mice (“in vivo”). And this information would help predict the likelihood of “spillover,” the jump of a coronavirus from bats to people.

Yes, there is the letter published in 17 March 2020 in the journal Nature Medicine led by Kristian G. Andersen, that said it's natural. Basically the argument was that because there aren't tell tale signs of cutting and pasting, it had to be natural. Unfortunately newer technologies don't leave those traces. So the article is wrong in ruling out the hypothesis. — ssu

In addition to this, simply evolving a pathogen in different hosts is also engineering, and can't really be distinguished between just natural evolution.

Weapons tech we can also presume is far ahead of what is known about by civilians, so civilian scientists commenting on what weapons labs can and can't do (unless it is breaking the laws of thermodynamics or something) is simply foolish.

The simple truth is, @Benkei, the establishment downplayed potential lab origins (weapon or accident) because saying otherwise would benefit Trump and the right wing insane conspiracy machine that fueled things up to and including storming the US capital looking to capture and hang US senators.

Now that an establishment politician is in the white house, the great game must continue and it is in the establishment's interest to up-play the lab origin to create tensions with China.

However, what is true is independent of what is good/bad for Trump or what is good/bad for the US establishment.

It's potentially true the virus did come from a lab, by accident or then even on purpose: by China in a classic "start the pandemic in China" fake out (the ol' burn my own house down to start a neighborhood fire because I'm a maniac, to both seem innocent as well as immediately deploy the next phase of the 1984 totalitarian state technologies to "fight" the virus; deflect from their genocide, deflect from Hong-Kong, which both mattered before the pandemic, but no one gives a shit about nowadays), or some adversary trying to harm China thinking they'd be particularly harmed with high population densities (if you told me an insane general or intelligence officer got 5 minutes with Trump in a Helicopter or wherever and asked him to quickly sign a paper authorizing releasing a bio weapon on China, not realizing the potential blow-back because their an insane idiot, that is definitely something I'd be surprised Trump not signing; and if you agree, then the system in place to prevent this sort of crazy shit happening was prevented for 4 years by aides who couldn't even stop Trump tweeting even with measures like hiding his phone from him) which didn't work as expected, or then to frame China for the pandemic and make it (eventually) appear like a classic fake out, or perhaps it was made (/ found and released) by some billionaire, or mere multi-millionaire, and was started in multiple places and simply went exponential first in China, etc (perhaps such a plan isn't expected to work, but plenty of crazy rich people have tried over the years and this one happened to work). Or perhaps it's just one of those random things nature does from time to time.

However, if it was one out of any number of defense departments or intelligence agencies that did it by accident or on purpose, the only thing we can be sure of is that it's some crazy tale involving macho off-the-cuff global strategic improvisation and many goose-bumpy moments that their having a good laugh about now (now that the evidence is buried pretty deep and we're unlikely to ever know the truth anyways).

There's an oddly one-sided scepticism at work here, were "might have escaped from a lab" becomes an extended narrative about genetic engineering and intentional infection, while the much more likely notion that it crossed from an animal is ignored.

People.

I was the Australian doctor on the WHO’s COVID-19 mission to China. Here’s what we found about the origins of the coronavirus

I think the reason is that one of the leading medical journals, The Lancet, published a condemnation of all "conspiracy theories" of possibility of a lab leak. Of course, the those totally rejecting one hypothesis at that moment when we don't know much, likely have something to hide. — ssu

I don't think any rational person would ever trust the Chinese government, to be honest. But I think what tends to happen is that many research universities, think tanks, and medical institutions are funded by China. So, obviously, you'll get scientific organizations siding with China. That's how science becomes an extension of politics and foreign interference.

I don't think any rational person would ever trust the Chinese government, to be honest. — Apollodorus

Whereas most governments, or special god blessed governments at least, would be trusted by any rational person. (irony alert)

....while the much more likely notion that it crossed from an animal is ignored. — Banno

On what basis can they determine that zoonotic transmission is "much more likely"?

A study led by scientists Botao Xiao and Lei Xiao of South China University of Technology concluded that “the killer coronavirus probably originated in a laboratory in Wuhan”. They also pointed out that at that time of the year wild bats would be hibernating and unlikely to be spreading diseases to anyone, especially in an urban centre of 9 million people like Wuhan.

And why did the regime arrest 5,000 people including doctors, scientists, lawyers and journalists? This was a massive cover-up operation that even the Chinese think was highly suspicious and suggests some dodgy goings-on. I think the Chinese know their own government better than anyone else.

Whereas most governments, or special god blessed governments at least, would be trusted by any rational person. — unenlightened

That wasn't what I said.

On what basis can they determine that zoonotic transmission is "much more likely"? — Apollodorus

What would be the point of replying? You've shown elsewhere that you accept contradictions. Logic has no place in your schema. The reasons are given in the article I cited above, but your eccentricity prevents your seeing them.

A good rule of thumb is not to ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence.

:up:

The reasons are given in the article I cited above, but your eccentricity prevents your seeing them. — Banno

Is that really the case? Where exactly are the "reasons"???

Your article says:

"Our investigations concluded the virus was most likely of animal origin. It probably crossed over to humans from bats, via an as-yet-unknown intermediary animal, at an unknown location. Such “zoonotic” diseases have triggered pandemics before. But we are still working to confirm the exact chain of events that led to the current pandemic. Sampling of bats in Hubei province and wildlife across China has revealed no SARS-CoV-2 to date."

"The market in Wuhan, in the end, was more of an amplifying event rather than necessarily a true ground zero. So we need to look elsewhere for the viral origins."

"Then there was the “cold chain” hypothesis. This is the idea the virus might have originated from elsewhere via the farming, catching, processing, transporting, refrigeration or freezing of food. Was that food ice cream, fish, wildlife meat? We don’t know. It’s unproven that this triggered the origin of the virus itself. But to what extent did it contribute to its spread? Again, we don’t know."

These are the statements that hold the article together:

"Probably", "unknown intermediary", "unknown location", "still working to confirm the exact chain of events", "no SARS-CoV-2 in Hubei bats", "we need to look elsewhere", "there was the hypothesis", "we don't know", "it's unproven", "again, we don't know", etc., etc.

There are more unknowns than knowns there. And even the "known" is just speculation. This isn't a scientific paper, it's whitewashing propaganda copied and pasted from official Chinese papers.

The fact is that the WHO team “lacked access to the complete data”, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has admitted that “data was withheld from the investigators”, “China refused to provide raw data on early COVID-19 cases to the WHO-led team”, one of the team’s investigators has already said.

U.S., 13 countries concerned WHO COVID-19 origin study was delayed, lacked access - statement

So, on what basis do they reach a conclusion when the data on which a conclusion could be drawn is missing?

I think people here are talking about a hypothesis.

So It's pretty odd replying to @Apollodorus that there is "no logic" in the schema and that the article you linked (see ) has all the answers.

It doesn't.

The simple problem here is that China has already jailed doctors for raising alarm in the pandemic and IS a totalitarian country. mentions more statements that not everything was given. Hence it could be a possibility that the Chinese officials erased or kept any kind of data on the Wuhan lab people having had Covid-symptoms etc. In a country like in the US, similar secrecy likely would backfire. So great, no traces indicated to the WHO team (that had as it's members people who had links to the Wuhan lab and a motivation for not finding a leak). What I find from the article that you linked is only that the author says it's extremely unlikely been a lab-leak (even if they sometime happen). And I guess that is it for you. Yet, even the WHO Director didn't rule out the hypothesis and admits that not everything was given, which does make me think it's a genuine possibility. If it really would be so extremely unlikely, why would he mention it?

So I don't understand your logic here, actually.

What I think is that likely we won't know either ever or for a very long time. Likely the whole discussion will be tried to be tarnished just as propaganda. Smoke and mirrors and accusations... Likely it's only historians a hundred years from now, who might come into agreement on what happened. Not it's too much of a political hot potato.

The bit leading up to

While viruses certainly do escape from laboratories, this is rare. So, we concluded it was extremely unlikely this had happened in Wuhan.

I'm nonplusses. Basic literacy.

It would probably help if the Chinese govt hadn't initially suppressed info in spite of the concerns of Wuhan doctors and have since remained opaque.

The Chinese culture exudes wisdom and grace from a western perspective. They're screwing up the stereotype.

The idea that lab mishaps are rare is piffle. According to this report from 2014:

More than 1,100 laboratory incidents involving bacteria, viruses and toxins that pose significant or bioterror risks to people and agriculture were reported to federal regulators during 2008 through 2012, government reports obtained by USA TODAY show.

More than half these incidents were serious enough that lab workers received medical evaluations or treatment, according to the reports. In five incidents, investigations confirmed that laboratory workers had been infected or sickened; all recovered.

Earlier this summer, other researchers at CDC potentially exposed dozens of agency staff to live anthrax because of mistakes; nobody was sickened. Meanwhile, at the National Institutes of Health, long-forgotten vials of deadly smallpox virus were discovered in a cold-storage room where they weren't supposed to be.

The reports, released by CDC in response to a request from USA TODAY, contain few details beyond a count of incidents by categories, such as incidents involving bites or scratches from infected animals, needle sticks, failures of personal protection equipment, spills or specimen packages that temporarily went missing after they were shipped. No thefts were reported.

Data for incidents reported in 2013 is not yet finalized, CDC said. In 2012, lab regulators received 247 reports of potential releases of dangerous pathogens. They also received 247 reports in 2011. There were 275 reports in 2010; 243 in 2009; and 116 in 2008. The reports come from regulated select agent research labs as well as clinical or diagnostic labs that are exempted from registration with federal officials but still must report incidents if they identify a select agent.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/08/17/reports-of-incidents-at-bioterror-select-agent-labs/14140483/

There were hundreds of reports of potential releases of dangerous pathogens per year, in one country alone.

I suppose this is why, in 2012, the bulletin of atomic scientists released this warning:

Awful as a pandemic brought on by the escape of a variant H5N1 virus might be, it is SARS that now presents the greatest risk. The worry is less about recurrence of a natural SARS outbreak than of yet another escape from a laboratory researching it to help protect against a natural outbreak. SARS already has escaped from laboratories three times since 2003, and one escape resulted in several secondary infections and one death.

https://thebulletin.org/2012/08/the-unacceptable-risks-of-a-man-made-pandemic/

The bit leading up to
While viruses certainly do escape from laboratories, this is rare. So, we concluded it was extremely unlikely this had happened in Wuhan.. — Banno

"Extremely rare" is relative and in this case totally misleading. There are viruses escaping from labs every now and then:

1 H1N1 Influenza in 1977
3 Smallpox from 1963 to 1978
1 VEE in 1995
6 SARS since 2003
1 FMD (Foot and Mouth) in 2007

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

https://www.businessinsider.com/5-terrifying-times-pandemics-escaped-from-laboratories-2014-7?r=US&IR=T

And if you don't have all the necessary data to measure the probability against, then "most likely" becomes pretty meaningless.

The idea that lab mishaps are rare is piffle. — NOS4A2

Of course. The Australian article is obviously pro-China propaganda.