NPR: Why A Lab In Wuhan Is Worth A Closer Look As A Possible Source Of The Pandemic

On whether information about the Wuhan lab can be learned without China's cooperation:

That's the challenge, right? So they have to either cooperate and we'd have to achieve that through diplomatic means or our intelligence community may have other means of trying to get to that information. But we really cannot get to a definitive answer without that information.

On why natural transmission from animals to humans is still the dominant theory for the origins of COVID-19:

This is really 99% of the time the source of emerging infectious diseases, whether you talk about HIV or Zika or Ebola, the original SARS, MERS. I mean, you keep going and going. But all of these have been the result of zoonotic spillovers — so, spillover of viruses from animals into humans. And this is what we've seen with the prior coronaviruses so probabilistically, it's far more likely that this would be a spillover event as well.

On whether President Biden has given the intelligence community enough time to investigate how the pandemic started:

I'm not sure that we're going to be able to get an answer in 90 days. I think if you look at some of the other things that would need to be done to also assess a potential spillover, that would mean, for example, testing blood bank samples that would go back to before December, November of 2019 to see if there was anything circulating previously. So there's a lot of work. I don't know if 90 days is enough.

a very sad song

Sum Ting Wong

In early 2020 journalists and politicians were calling everyone who even raised the lab leak as a plausible hypothesis racist, anti-science deplorables. What changed? LOL

R4, what’s the “lol” for? Where in this article does it say that the virus escaped form the lab in Wuhan? It doesn’t. The article says what most intelligent people have been saying from the beginning, that we need to find out the origin of this virus.

What people had a problem with was Trump screeching about the “China Virus” without offering any proof and making racist comments. And many of his deplorable supporters joined in. I still don’t get the “lol” part.

We don't need a closer look.

It came from those fucking chinese.

I don't know why people are trying to deny it, or pretend like maaaayyyyybe it didn't come from them.

IT CAME FROM THEM.

End of story.

Of course it's worth looking at, but we also need to remember that we get almost EVERYTHING from China

Do we want to go to war with them? They could start calling in America's loans. They could start a real war. Do all these idiots want to send their kids to fight?

Fucking fauci brought all this on. He just had to run his big fat mouth every single day, to who ever would listen to him

He did not give a shit that half the country finds him so polarizing they don't believe a word he says. I've been saying this the whole time about him. He LOVES the sound of his own voice. He's probably giving an interview to someone right his very moment. I'd bet money on it

Biden was a fool for bringing him on or at the least, not telling him to cool it with the interviews

[quote]In early 2020 journalists and politicians were calling everyone who even raised the lab leak as a plausible hypothesis racist, anti-science deplorables. What changed? LOL

Agreed.

The idea that the coronavirus could have leaked from a lab instead of jumping from animals to humans was dismissed as a conspiracy theory and and such discussions were BANNED on Facebook.

That ban has now been lifted.

LOL indeed.

Fauci didn't do shit.

Those goddamned chinamen caused this, mother fucker!!!!!

[quote]In early 2020 journalists and politicians were calling everyone who even raised the lab leak as a plausible hypothesis racist, anti-science deplorables

Most of the people who were doing it were doing it to distract from trump saying it was a hoax. Most of them were racist.

Kung Flu

[quote]IT CAME FROM THEM.

Jaysus Christus! well, bomb every single one of the 1.2 billion of them then!

HOLY FUCK, there are a ton of idiots on the DL today

[quote] well, bomb every single one of the 1.2 billion of them then!

Oh, how I wish.

WHO FUCKING CARES ? It doesnt matter where it came from...WHAT MATTERS IS WE FAILED TO ACT WHEN IT CAME TO THE US. It was failure to act that led to almost 600,000 DEAD. It was failure to act that led us, with 4% of the worlds population to have 1/4 of the cases and deaths. Where it came from is nothing more than a diversion from our own failures...and until we acknowledge that fact, it most likely will happen again in the future. Remember, it was Trump who pulled our scientists out of Wuhan, it was Trump who cleaned house at the CDC, it was Trump who pulled us out of WHO, it was Trump who failed to respond by telling us it will be gone in days and that it was a Democratic hoax. ALL DISTRACTIONS FROM THE FAILURE OF THE US TO PROTECT ITS CITIZENS.

[quote] He did not give a shit that half the country finds him so polarizing they don't believe a word he says.

Fauci says absolutely nothing dramatic or controversial. The right has worked so hard to vilify him that, no matter what he says, they claim they are confused and hate him.

The right MADE him polarizing because he dared to challenge their messiah

[quote]Most of the people who were doing it were doing it to distract from trump saying it was a hoax. Most of them were racist.

That's according to you.

EVERYTHING is racist! LOL. Even discussions about the possible origins of a virus.

The right had it half right--yes, it could have been a lab leak, BUT, it is highly highly highly doubtful that China released it on purpose, which was the main line from the right

[quote] Fucking fauci brought all this on.

No, Trump declaring that this was not a real epidemic brought this on

[quote]WHO FUCKING CARES ? It doesnt matter where it came from...WHAT MATTERS IS WE FAILED TO ACT WHEN IT CAME TO THE US. It was failure to act that led to almost 600,000 DEAD. It was failure to act that led us, with 4% of the worlds population to have 1/4 of the cases and deaths.

The US did better than the EU with its 720 358 deaths and slow bumbling rollout of the vaccines.

[quote]WHO FUCKING CARES ?

Only absolute idiots would not care.

The origins of this virus which brought a good part of the world to its knees, NEEDS to be investigated.

R19 Bullshit...and while you're at it you might want to add Canada and Mexico to our totals since you're lumping all the European countries together as the EU. We have 1/4 of the worlds population AND 25% of all cases and deaths. Think about that.

Less important than where it came from is what happened when it arrived. The trump administration ignored it, downplayed it, applauded states that did the same, produced torrents of misinformation and did nothing to manage testing and tracing. It was a dangerous virus that became a fucking disaster when it could have been managed.

Really r20 ?...will that undo all the damage and deaths. NO IT WILL NOT. Thats like saying that if a metoer hit the Earth and contained a virus that spread, it is the fault of space aliens instead of trying to stop it and controlling the damage it caused. It doesnt matter where it came from, what matters is how we contain and manage it.

[quote]Bullshit...and while you're at it you might want to add Canada and Mexico to our totals since you're lumping all the European countries together as the EU. We have 1/4 of the worlds population AND 25% of all cases and deaths. Think about that.

You are so fucking stupid.

[quote] It doesnt matter where it came from

Tell that to the Biden administration:

REUTERS May 27, 2021

"President Joe Biden ordered aides to find answers to the origin of the virus that causes COVID-19, saying on Wednesday that U.S. intelligence agencies are pursuing rival theories potentially including the possibility of a laboratory accident in China."

Gee...they should consult you and save themselves the effort!

For the DUMB CUNT who keeps asking "Why does it matter???"

For you. DUMB CUNT!

[quote] Everything at stake in the hunt for COVID-19’s origins

Since the early days of the pandemic, there's been broad scientific consensus that the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 originally developed in bats before eventually moving to humans, just as the viruses behind SARS and MERS did. An alternate explanation, that the virus escaped from a Chinese lab, was largely dismissed as something between highly unlikely and wildly conspiratorial.

Over time, however, the lab leak theory has gained more traction among respected scientists as circumstantial evidence has piled up and proof of animal transmission hasn’t emerged. To be clear, no explanation of the origins of SARS-CoV-2 has been proven and many scientists still say it is far more likely that the virus developed naturally. But a number of health experts who had expressed near certainty about the issue last spring are now at least considering the lab leak theory as a possibility.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said earlier this month that he’s “not convinced” that the virus originated in the wild and said he supported further investigation into the question. Dr. Robert Redfield, who was director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention until January, said recently that he believes the lab theory is the “most likely” explanation.

In the most basic terms, the lab leak theory posits that the virus was created by scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology — a prominent research facility in the same part of China where the pandemic first took hold — and was unwittingly transmitted to the general population by lab staffers who became infected there. An alternative theory, that the virus was released deliberately as a bioweapon, has been thoroughly debunked.

The origins of the coronavirus aren’t just a matter of scientific curiosity. A definitive answer to where it came from could have an enormous impact on how we understand and prepare for deadly outbreaks, the political effects of the pandemic in the U.S and the world’s relationship with China.

Some experts say proof that the virus escaped from a lab would upend the entire field of virology and force the scientific community to reconsider how it studies dangerous pathogens. Others fear that a lab leak would undo the trust and goodwill that the field of science has gained with much of the public over the course of the pandemic.

In the U.S., proof of a lab leak could allow former President Donald Trump — who repeatedly attempted to blame China for the pandemic — to reframe what is widely considered to be his failed response to the virus, political analysts say. That would not only have an impact on his legacy, they argue, but could also influence his chances of winning reelection if he runs for president again. The lab leak theory could also be a moment of reckoning for the media, some argue, because of the certainty with which they dismissed the idea last year.

The debate over the lab leak has already raised tensions between the Chinese government — which categorically denies the theory — and its international competitors, who have become frustrated with China’s lack of transparency throughout the pandemic. Clear evidence that the virus did in fact escape from a Chinese lab could further fray the country’s international relationships or deal a blow to its ambitions to become the world’s dominant economic power, experts say.

President Biden on Wednesday asked U.S. intelligence agencies to redouble their efforts to find the source of COVID-19, but it’s unclear whether China will allow anything more than the limited access they have offered to global investigators so far. Many virologists say it’s possible that the origins of SARS-CoV-2 may never be proven.

“While a lab-leak debate overwhelms the media & politics, tidal waves of COVID will crash on low/middle-income countries. New strains of SARSCoV2 could evolve in the next few years. … Powerful countries would be wise to concentrate on preventing that.” — Nature reporter Amy Maxman

“This question of origins is not an idle debate, either. It matters a lot, because knowing how a virus-driven pandemic begins focuses our attention on preventing similar situations. There are many more disease-causing viruses out there.” — Josh Fischman, Scientific American

“Virologists have a significant stake in the origin issue because they have for years enhanced the danger of natural viruses in their laboratories. … If in fact one of these souped-up viruses is the cause of the COVID-19 pandemic, virologists everywhere, not just in China, will have a lot of explaining to do.” — Nicholas Wade, New York Post

“It’s not all about whether a lab accident caused this particular pandemic. I’d like to see the attention focus on the regulation of dangerous experiments, because we’ve seen what a pandemic can do to us all, and we should be extremely sure before we do anything that increases that probability even a little.” — Epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch to MIT Technology Review

“Should we discover that COVID-19 originated in research — however well-intentioned — a recent boost in public support for science could evaporate, which might be the greatest risk of all.” — Bryan Walsh, Axios

R4 not just politicians and journalists, some members here on the DL were saying the exact same things. My guess is that some of those very same people are posting on this thread about "we knew something was wrong. There's no way this could have happened from animal cross-contamination."

I will now eat my popcorn and watch the drama unfold.

R15 that's not true. Fauci has always been polarizing. He is the reason gay men still cannot donate blood. He's paternal, arrogant, and definitely full of himself. He relishes the attention that the pandemic has brought him, probably thanks God every morning that it happened. Let's also not forget he funded the gain of function research on coronaviruses at Wuhan that is linked to the pandemic.

R22 The virus' origin is important. Labs with poor safety protocols need to be rooted out. We need to prevent lab leaks in the future so we don't have a coronavirus type pandemic every year. If the virus did in fact leak from the Wuhan Virology Lab then it's not a random act of mother nature but a MANMADE pandemic.

R5 Top scientists from the WHO were shutting down the lab leak hypothesis early on with KGB like efficiency. Those engaging in the hypothesis were persona non grata in the scientific community for about a year. Science has became extremely politicized in the past 20 or so years. Keep telling yourself comforting lies about how smart people are objective and above politics to make you sleep at night though.

Anthony, you in danger gurl!

[quote]He did not give a shit that half the country finds him so polarizing they don't believe a word he says.

That you think these same people who still believe Trump is still president are anything but trash worth listening to, is laughable

NOT* worth listening to

Also "Trump's divisiveness made us lie about it" is not an excuse. I swear if Trump said "breathing air is good" a certain subset of liberals would hold their breathe until they passed out.

Well, well, well.

R35, what a fucking hilarious hypothetical when the *reality* is that a Biden relief bill every fucking Republican voted against are now crowing about it in their district. You are a fucking idiot. Liberals aren't the one who pull that bullshit, that's why you have to "pretend" while I can point to example after example of Republicans literally saying their only job is OBSTRUCTION.

R37 You're proving my point. "BUT REPUBLICANS ARE WORSE" is not a compelling argument. Anyone with more than two braincells knows that republicans are fucking stupid. I expect more from liberals but they seem to be willing to act like partisan retarded babies when confronted with facts.

No, R38, you are attempting to attach a hypothetical and I'm pointing out reality for you. You have to use a hypothetical to shit on liberals because you don't have an actual example to point to. I am reminding you which group actually does what you're attempting to claim about liberals.

Trump could've specifically referred to a lab in one place in China. Instead, like a fucking racist child "Kung Flu." When you've already shown yourself to be a colossal scumbag and continue to do so, WTF would anyone listen to anything you have to say? When you're someone who has NEVER blamed white people for mass shootings or have a history of specifically attacking minorities as a whole, no one should listen to you. Trump sees race and that's how he determines his reaction. If this were a lab in Russia, he wouldn't have said a fucking thing. THAT'S THE POINT. And he made it about all of China which led to attacks here on Asians.

You think people don't notice how he reacts to ANYTHING involving minorities vs white?

[quote] Also "Trump's divisiveness made us lie about it" is not an excuse. I swear if Trump said "breathing air is good" a certain subset of liberals would hold their breathe until they passed out.

Like Repubs did when Obama said, The sky is blue

Wuvid.

Trump used racist language about COVID, not to point out it's possible origins, but to throw red meat to his racist base.

He was a white supremacist president and acted like that whatever he did.

R40 And? Republicans are stupid. I expect that behavior from them. Republicans being dumb is not noteworthy.

Opinion piece from Scientific American.

R15, fauci is the reason this is hitting the fan right now. He's been so busy giving his polarizing interviews day and night. He's been asked about China and the lab. I don't know his exact responses, but they were to the effect, "it doesn't matter", there's more important things to worry about". The right wing tabloids/news started talking about "how fauci said, it doesn't matter" and "flip flop fauci" because the dems have fucked up with mask messaging. And of course, everytime the mask restrictions change, fauci's out there talking about it. He's just got to run that big mouth of his. He ran it so much he to appear in front of congress or the senate

One day he says this and one day he says that. He just needs to shut the fuck up. And Biden's a damn fool for not reigning him in.

fauci is the reason for the renewed focus into the lab and China. It's true. It's all fox has been complaining about

What would happen if it is discovered that COVID did originate from the Wuhan Lab?

Oh, I wish I could post ALL the headlines from last year calling people racist or crazy for exploring this. And people wonder why I hate the media...

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

Oh, we allowed to talk about this now without being labeled a racist? Makes you wonder if all those "woke" people weren't just agents paid off by China, to keep foreign populations from being scared to pressure their governments into looking for answers...

The NY Times and all the other papers are reporting about this. It's all because fauci kept running his big fat mouth

Even China is pissed off at fauci for bringing this all back up. He said it may have come from the lab, after months of denying it

[quote] Oh, we allowed to talk about this now without being labeled a racist? Makes you wonder if all those "woke" people weren't just agents paid off by China, to keep foreign populations from being scared to pressure their governments into looking for answers.

STFU. You know why it was a problem last year. Mostly it was brought up by trump to pivot away from the fact that he was doing nothing while people were dying

Mostly the only people who were bringing it up were racists

Trump and FOX ranting about China last year was a huge mistake because it distracted from the most important issue, which was developing a vaccine. And, don't forget, they both were cross-messaging by claiming that the virus was "no worse than the flu," demonstrating that they really had no interest in the truth. Remember, Trump HAD the opportunity to deal more effectively with the virus at the early stages and failed.

R51, that's what these idiots don't seem to grasp. Trump is a fucking racist and couched his "concern" in that racism, not because he was some fucking prescient being. How do you not understand what the issue is? And as I said earlier, had this come from Russia, that fat orange fuck wouldn't have blamed Russia for it - that's. the. point. Trump's views are not guided by facts or science, it's guided by his hate and opportunism.

For anyone who pulls the "If this were Obama" "If this were Biden" If this were Clinton," we'd fucking *know* that their concern would focus specifically on that particular lab, not an excuse to blame and entire race of people or childishly refer to it by racist names. They wouldn't be a fucking asshole racist with a history of being a fucking asshole racist who saw an excuse to just blame some "slanty eyes." Trump's entire presidency was about shifting blame to anyone who wasn't white or Russia and making money.

an* entire

Boris and Russian Troll are working hard to spread fake news today.

You fat troll are watching too much resident evil

[quote]Boris and Russian Troll are working hard to spread fake news today.

So is the NY Times, Washington Post, NPR, the BBC, Axios, the Christian Science Monitor, Bloomberg, Reuters, the Associated Press and NE Journal of Medicine. You know, all those right wing sites for the lunatic fringe

[quote] Even China is pissed off at fauci for bringing this all back up. He said it may have come from the lab, after months of denying it

Who in the FUCK gives TWO FUCKS what FUCKING china thinks????

You speak as though we're supposed to pretend that they're our friends. THEY'RE NOT.

They're our enemy!

They're the enemy of the world, if these reports are true.

Fauci is a fucking HERO for outing them.

I hope that the news keeps hammering china until we find out the truth. Which is OBVIOUSLY that it came from their lab.

Then the world can isolate and ostracize them, like we should have done a year ago.

[quote] Who in the FUCK gives TWO FUCKS what FUCKING china thinks????

The world does because it relies on them.

A lot of you dumb cunts are so fucking polarized you are disqualifying your own argument.

Yup, a lot of dumbass liberal talking heads like Chris Hayes said the theory the virus came from Wuhan was "debunked" and "racist".

HOWFUCKINGEVER, many others said that assuming the virus came from the lab in Wuhan without proof was what was racist. And until we began investigating, speculation on the origin of the virus is dangerous and, yes, very racist.

But because no one in the US understands anything about nuance, and everyone approaches these issues from such a dumb fogheaded political bias, a whole lot of people are hyperbolizing the issue and screaming conspiracy.

Now that we are over the first hurdle of the pandemic and vaccines are out there we can begin these investigations. Admitting an unlikely (I believe) lab origin of the virus is possible isn't the same as saying it's plausible. But none of you cunt faces understand that, and that's why humanity is doomed.

R60 No you are doomed and anti-asian. The lab theory was debunked multiple times with WHO visited the Wuhan lab and concluded the absorb theory to be unlikely.

You are just looking for something to blame. I bet you are a Trump supporter who have to store your MEGA hat in the basement because your mama doesn't let you wear in public.

Okay, now I'm convinced that china has p.r. shills working over time here. See R61.

[quote] The lab theory was debunked multiple times with WHO visited the Wuhan lab and concluded the absorb theory to be unlikely.

You mean the WHO "investigative" visit that took place TEN MONTHS after the start of the pandemic?????

That's like asking police to investigate the scene of a murder TEN MONTHS LATER, and trying to get an honest result.

china had TEN MONTHS to clean up their fucking mess, sanitize the crime scene, get rid of all evidence, AND THEN let the WHO investigators inspect the labs.

GIVE ME A FUCKING BREAK, YOU GODDAMNED PROPAGANDIST PIECE OF SHIT!!!!

R62 And you believe in the elite are reptilian in disguise too.

Bitch please, WHO send their best expert to the lab for thorough investigation. And their conclusion was the theory is unlikely. Your distrust of authority is what makes the crazy QAnon and Trumper we have these days.

[quote] WHO send their best expert to the lab for thorough investigation. And their conclusion was the theory is unlikely. Your distrust of authority is what makes the crazy QAnon and Trumper we have these days.

Says the paid propaganda shill.

Do you get paid by the CCP, for every post you make?

R61 from your insane trolling and poor grasp of English, I'm guessing you're a PRC troll.

Trump was right, after all. This is the Wuhan (lab) virus.

R65 I am a regular American Democrat who stand against Russian trolls and right wing conspiracists. China is, just like many countries, a victim of these pandemics. I am caucasian but I stand with my Asian brothers and sisters.

R63 Bitch, are you trolling and trying to sound foreign? 😂

Honestly, I don’t know what to think but I’m definitely with Biden regarding further investigations.

We homos and lebs on DL have been clamoring all along that this dangerous virus is man-made!!! Duh!!!

Rofl. That post at R67 has GOT to be kidding.

If it's a serious post, then LOLOLOLOL.

If it's not a serious post, then haha. Good one.

LOL if we can take a momentary break from the Russian trolls, the CCP trolls, the division trolls and the hilarious let’s pretend satire trolls. Let’s review some basic facts.

1) Dr. Fauci doesn’t pick what extramural awards get funded. Applications are score by third party peer reviewers.

2) while the absolute ban on NIH funding of GOF research has ended, approval still requires a couple year’s worth of paperwork and a CDC site inspection. WIV wasn’t doing GOF research funded by NIH. If they were it was funded by the CCP. (China can pay for its own experiments thank you)

3) lab leak and and zoonotic transmission can both be true if WIV staff were handing bat samples without proper safety precautions.

R61 Did you even read my post cuntface? I said because it's possible doesn't mean it's plausible and I said I don't believe it came from the lab.

I also said speculation about it coming from the lab without proof was racist.

But no, you had to read whatever you wanted to (probably blinded with rage because I used the word liberal in a negative context) and just like the politically polarized slimy meat curtain you are put words in my mouth.

Probably the only thing you put in anyone's mouth these days is false words you sexless clap-wart.

Sincerely, the old-school FAFO commie leftist at R60

R72 You are racist. Go back to Russia.

Can we summon the DL gods to ban the "everyone is a racist but me" cuntface so the rest of us can have a real discussion?

Trump was faced with serious opposition from the media, politicians, a possibly compromised Fauci and WHO, and social media whose ability to control the messaging far exceeds the power of any elected official in our history. All that should be terrifying to anyone with common sense. People still praise China's pandemic response despite evidence that already exists of a massive coverup. That alone is stupefying. I never seriously considered that this was a bioweapon released intentionally, but the media has done such a pathetic job, that I honestly wouldn't even be shocked if it were true.

I sincerely doubt that the media were genuinely outraged by Trump's alleged racism. They were just siding with China because their job is to protect their corporate interests in China. They don't give a fuck about Anti Asian hate. I wonder what the press would have called Trump if he actually had more of a spine. Their heads would probably explode.

[Quote]I also said speculation about it coming from the lab without proof was racist.

WTF? Is EVERYTHING racist to you?

Just for everyone's information, CHINA does NOT want an investigation on this. Dr. Anthony Fauci does not have any control on what the Chinese government does, okay.

Also, the Chinese data that was turned over to the US, our allies and WHO was basically purposely incomplete and BS. This is always the case when it comes to China. The US and WHO tries to get as much information that we can.

[quote]In the U.S., proof of a lab leak could allow former President Donald Trump — who repeatedly attempted to blame China for the pandemic — to reframe what is widely considered to be his failed response to the virus, political analysts say. That would not only have an impact on his legacy, they argue, but could also influence his chances of winning reelection if he runs for president again.

So instead of Trump failing to protect America from a naturally occurring virus, he failed to protect the country from an act of biological warfare? Quite the campaign slogan that will make.

I mean we all know that we need to stop buying crap from China and start diversifying our trade. It was always dangerous giving a dictatorship that much power and they showed us in the last few years that they are totally crazy too. They will never be a partner you can trust.

Even if this virus didn't come from a lab, intentionally or unintentionally, it did come from China, like many other viruses before. They know their low hygiene standards are responsible for creating animal viruses leaping to humans in those filthy wet markets they have. With everything from pangoline to bats to goose to pigs to digs, the piss, shit and blood; all under one roof.

Just add one thing here, China is not North Korea, it's OPEN to the outside world. If you have a passport, you can fly in without any problems, there was a period of time in 2020 they imposed strict international travel restrictions, but it has since been eased. Before Covid, and even in the early months of 2020 till March, you can fly in/out of China freely. The same is with Russia, no one is stopping you from visiting Moscow anytime.

So whenever you were told we don't know what's really going on in China or Russia, you can't trust them on their own reporting. The question you should ask is, if a tourist can visit China freely and share their stories on IG in real time, why people in the intelligence or the politicians claim we don't know what's really going on in China?

*dogs

R80 you can’t visit China “freely”. They watch every tourist like a hawk. Hilarious that you’re trying to argue that the CCP is some transparent government, operating openly. Please. They have actual concentration camps we only know about because of pictures from space.

[quote]So whenever you were told we don't know what's really going on in China or Russia, you can't trust them on their own reporting. The question you should ask is, if a tourist can visit China freely and share their stories on IG in real time, why people in the intelligence or the politicians claim we don't know what's really going on in China?

What bizarre reasoning. “People from around the world post selfies from Times Square so obviously Romania and Eritrea know everything the U.S. government is trying to hide.”

R80, why don't you try going to that lab and see for yourself if you think it's so easy?!

They keep track of famous people and VIPs and people who work in universities who visit China.

R82 that's simply not true. I don't want to argue here since most of you never visit China or any foreign countries, except maybe the Caribbean resort islands.

can we send maga and qnon over to China to investigate this?

R67, where the fuck are you from?!

You sound like a robot.

Of course the Chinese did it! I believe it came from the lab!!!

But I think it was accidental. Coz they are useless cunts!!! Their own vaccine is utter shit! That's why they have to steal and spy on everyone!!!

[quote]where the fuck are you from?!

Hint: it rhymes with Dinah.

All the evidence has been destroyed!!!

It's been so long ffs!

Everything is faked! Ever go to Chinatown? People go there to buy fake lux goods. they are good with fakes!

That Chinese cunt troll in this thread is probably a spy!

They all have to spy for china, it's their law. Therefore NEVER buy Chinese branded anything!

R83 But if the Time Square is the center of a contagious disease or a bombing , then you cannot claim "we don't have any knowledge about it", as you said, tourists can post selfie there, then you should have some data to work on, if you had nothing before and only started to collect information after the breakout or the explosion, it's your own intelligence oversight.

The reason I mention this is, there was a gross oversight from US intelligence. The government of Taiwan got the first hand knowledge from Chinese social media about Wuhan and a strange respiratory illness, the posts about the severe condition and patient deaths were widely discussed and posted online, and that was at end of December 2019. Read this report, you should ask, a Taiwanese CDC doctor can find all the information he needed from Chinese social media, why US intelligence can't?

The theory that has been thoroughly debunked was that some secret Chinese force made the virus and released it upon the world in an act of bio-warfare. This is what Trump and Qnuts pushed from the beginning, and yes, it was and is racist, naive, and exactly what a stupid person would think a reasonable conclusion. That it is not supported in facts, evidence or truth didn't and doesn't matter. And Trump pushed this so hard, he failed to do anything about it. I was screaming at the time that if Trump was right, he should have done something about it; that he didn't belies his claim that Covid-19 was intentionally created and released. And he was so intent on avoiding any responsibility that all he did was told us to shove lightbulbs up our asses, inject bleach, and it will magically disappear.

This is what frustrates me the most about Republicanazis. They have a PR machine unparalleled in the history of the world. When they claimed it was bio-warfare, they said nothing about Trump's lack of response, and no one noticed. When Biden suggests that it could have been an accidental release from a lab that probably has lax compliance with international standards, the PR machine goes into overdrive and tries to twist this into somehow making Trump right. Well if he was, why did he fail to act? It's not like we have followed the Constitution regarding war powers since 9/11, and in the face of a global pandemic, Trump would have had the support of at least half of the country to retaliate. And at the same time, if we discover that it was just lackadaisical compliance with basic biohazard protocols, why do I think everyone from Fox noise to the Qnuts will howl over whatever sanctions or retaliations that Biden imposes on China as a result?

The end result of this tempest in a teapot is that we'll find there is no conclusive evidence on how the virus emerged or where it came from. The problem is that we have two continents bursting at the seams with human beings with the ability to traverse the globe in less than a day. We're protected — for the moment — by the fact that international travel is above the means of the vast majority of these people. But as we've seen, that protection is fleeting when a buffoon is running the — for the moment — most important country on the planet.

And all anybody cares about is whether it's Trump or Biden who's right. and [italic]that[/italic] will form the foundation of our response.

[quote]WHO send their best expert to the lab for thorough investigation.

Reading this in a Chinese accent. The grammar errors makes it work.

Fauci said 3 workers there were hospitalized in November 2019

Biden will do everything possible to avoid confronting China about what is well known all over East Asia, as mentioned in R92. Investigation results with be inconclusive evidence, originated in wet markets, horrific lab error, etc. Because the nanosecond Biden accuses China of doing exactly what it did - concocting a novel virus and inflicting it on the West - China will simply inflict yet another novel virus on the West and we'll all be back in quarantine for another year.

[quote] This is what Trump and Qnuts pushed from the beginning, and yes, it was and is racist, naive, and exactly what a stupid person would think a reasonable conclusion.

When did Trump say that China released this intentionally? Reports of a coverup happened at the very beginning of the pandemic. Trump himself was late to the game and was criticized for praising Xi's response and China's transparency. However, since then, the narrative of China having a better Covid response than the US continued to persist while Trump pushed back. He never actually called it an act of war. I don't believe he would have even if he believed it due to practical reasons.

[quote] This is what frustrates me the most about Republicanazis. They have a PR machine unparalleled in the history of the world.

You honestly think their PR machine can compare to the totality of a media empire that can literally scrub stories and ban journalists near instantaneously as Facebook did. Those who even questioned the official talking point was branded as a conspiracy theorist or worse. Given what we've seen this past week where a famous actor was literally forced to do a hostage video, it truly makes you wonder where the true power lies. Republicans, independents, and certain progressives all thrive in independent media, none of which apologize to China.

[quote] The end result of this tempest in a teapot is that we'll find there is no conclusive evidence on how the virus emerged or where it came from.

So in the end we can't even blame Trump for the lack of investigation as even Biden will likely fail without massive international pressure.

China is about to be sanctioned and sued into oblivion.

Fuck these scientists. The “good” ones and the “bad” ones. And fuck China.

[quote]Virus researchers say there is virtually no chance that the new coronavirus was released as result of a laboratory accident in China or anywhere else. - NPR, April 2020

R93 is the voice of reasons. Anyone who push for Wuhan Lab theory is a Trump-ass licking Republican. Period.

I love how the Chines bots want us to believe we just have to surrender to them.

Scientists say we need evidence before declaring things. News at 11.

Some of you are stupid beyond belief and can't seem to read further than a headline.

People need to accept the fact that the virus is originated from nature and is part of our consequence for polluting the environment.

it's fucking China's fault! They are disgusting filthy pigs who eat all kinds of animals and live so close to them, that's why this fucking happened! If you believe if came from animals to humans etc.

Or it came from the lab...

EITHER way it's CHINA'S FAULT!!!!

STOP EATING DISGUSTING ANIMALS!

*it came

R93 is an idiot. He's postulating a strawman to make the hypothesis seem ridiculous. Go to bed.

We'll wait to see what the evidence produces.

Thanks, Chinese troll R101. Fuck off now.

You're so right, r92. The Wuhan Institute of Virology is just like Times Square!

And if only I could see some tourist selfies from inside the oh-so-high-security Wuhan lab, I'd feel so much better informed and all of these hurtful misunderstandings would be cleared up.

Biden, Fauci and IC probably know a lot more than they let on. They just don't go hinting at things when they don't already know something.

The whole thing never made sense. The cover up, the kicking journos out of the country, the bullying of every country who wanted an independent investigation, the hush hush, the aggressive behavior. They got something to hide. It was probably an unintentional leak, because otherwise the connection wet market and the virology institute around the corner wouldn't be so obvious.

China's government is always cagey and uncooperative, which means their media is as well. You can't say China is being suspicious about this issue when this is the exact way they act about every piece of news that makes it out of their country and into international reporting. Airplane crashes, murders, missing tourists, they're always cagey about it. It's not suspicious because they were cagey about this, too, because they always are.

He sounds like someone pretending to be a Chinese troll r87, we had some people like that during the elections, they sounded exactly like Boris from the Bullwinkle cartoons.

R109 are you suggesting a tourist in US can take a selfie inside a CDC lab?

Anyway, you are too dumb or too lazy or both , so I won't bother to ask you to read the linked article, it's a real eye opening story. If you still insist there is no way to get "truth" from China, maybe you should outsource your intelligence gathering to average citizens in Taiwan, they do a far better job than CIA spies in China.

That's one of the things that bugs me the most about Fauci. He doesn't ever just give the facts. He tells people what he thinks they need to hear in order for them to act in the way that he determines is most beneficial at the time. Like he's some chimp-faced puppet master daddy and we are all just pawns. Seriously cannot stand that guy.

Incredible.

In case you forgot

"there’s no reason to be walking around with a mask" (Fauci, 03/08/2020)

In case you forgot:

In case you forgot, I’m over both Dump and Fauci. They both need to fuck off already.

That being said, we need to investigate both this and the Capitol terrorist attack further and cut “move on” from bats and questioning the election results.

R114, that's how he survived in Washington DC for decades! He knows how to kiss ass and which asshole to lick. He is a political animal.

Also Fauci, "it's common sense to wear two masks instead of one"

China counters Biden's Covid origins lab probe ... by calling for a US lab probe

From CNN's Nectar Gan and Jessie Yeung

US President Joe Biden's call for a renewed investigation into the origins of the coronavirus feels like déjà vu in Beijing.

Just over a year ago, when Covid-19 infections were rising in the US, former President Donald Trump started to promote a then-fringe theory that the virus had escaped from a lab in Wuhan, the Chinese city where it was first detected. Beijing reacted angrily to the claim, accusing Trump of trying to scapegoat China for his own failure to contain the outbreak domestically.

This week, a previously undisclosed intelligence report surfaced, claiming that several researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology fell ill in November 2019 and had to be hospitalized. Under mounting public pressure, Biden ordered the intelligence community to intensify its efforts to re-examine how the virus originated, including the possibility that it emerged from a lab accident.

Naturally, that's drawn the ire of Beijing -- again -- and prompted it to renew a counter-conspiracy theory that the virus actually started in the US.

"The US doesn't care about facts or truth at all, neither is it interested in a serious scientific study on the origins. Its only aim is to use the pandemic for stigmatization and political manipulation to shift the blame," said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian.

Zhao then referenced Fort Detrick, a US Army biomedical research laboratory in Maryland that has been linked -- without evidence -- to the emergence of the virus by Chinese officials and state media outlets.

"What secrets are hidden in the suspicion-shrouded Fort Detrick and the over 200 US bio-labs all over the world?" Zhao said, adding that the US "owes an explanation to the world."

R120 And this is one of the reasons I am over this fame whore, who alternates between speaking out of his ass and mouth. It apparently wasn’t “common sense” to him at one point. He irritates me and I wish Biden had replaced him.

R121 If it leaked from China, China will still find a way to blame the US for it, and Americans will accept their explanation because it happened during the Trump administration.

[quote] Beijing reacted angrily to the claim, accusing Trump of trying to scapegoat China for his own failure to contain the outbreak domestically.

China and US media are on the exact same page. Many Americans don't see the irony in a country with people in concentration camps lecturing us about racism.

About Ft. Detrick, here is what China is referring to.

July 11, 2019 - Respiratory outbreak' being investigated at retirement community after 54 residents fall ill Two have died and 18 were hospitalized in Virginia, officials said.

[quote]China counters Biden's Covid origins lab probe ... by calling for a US lab probe

Real mature, China!

Don't know how they connect it to Ft. Detrick, but I do give them credit for finding a cluster case, which has never been investigated. Looking back, it definitely sounds like Coronavirus.

There is a lot of confusion and misinformation about this issue. Let's concentrate on what we know:

1 - Last year, after the pandemic got out of control, Trump intimated and allowed his surrogates to say that the virus was created in a lab as a bioweapon, that China intentionally released it for nefarious reasons, and, therefore, it was not Trump's fault.

2- Before Covid-19 got out of control, Trump disbanded the CDC unit in China tasked with monitoring the labs in the fall of 2019, around the time the virus started circulating in Wuhan. He likely did this as a favor to the Chinese for something in return.

3 - Now, we are looking at a much narrower issue: SARS-COV-2 escaped from a lab with loose safety protocols in Wuhan. I can see this. We know the genome of the virus is natural in origin, and China studies SARS viruses obsessively. We also know how much China values QA.

4 - It's on Trump either way. The CDC could have gone into Wuhan in 2019 and contained it, OR after it was loose, Trump could have worked to control the virus. He did neither.

5 - Trump will take advantage of serious intelligence gathering to confuse and lie about the issue. It's his MO. And intelligence gathering is hampered by no longer having the CDC on-site in China.

R127 are you drunk? put down the bottle, it's 9am!

[quote] Last year, after the pandemic got out of control, Trump intimated and allowed his surrogates to say that the virus was created in a lab as a bioweapon

Who are these surrogates? I'm really curious to know.

[quote] Before Covid-19 got out of control, Trump disbanded the CDC unit in China tasked with monitoring the labs in the fall of 2019, around the time the virus started circulating in Wuhan. [bold] He likely did this as a favor to the Chinese for something in return.

How has China shows that it's willing to cooperate with an investigation before or since? What type of favor would they offer in exchange for blaming the US for a pandemic?

[quote] It's on Trump either way. The CDC could have gone into Wuhan in 2019 and contained it, OR after it was loose, Trump could have worked to control the virus. He did neither.

Just like the rest of the world did I imagine.

It's too coincidental that theBiosafety_levelmy just happened to originate right across the street from a L4 lab when there are only a handful of L4 labs in the world. As well, the Wuhan lab had dead covid at the lab prior to the pandemic and was studying it. Further three Wuhan lab staff contracted covid prior to Dec 2019. I would not be surprised if covid already had some outbreak clusters even before late 2019. The global locations of L4 labs is very interesting. Almost certainly the pandemic originated via accidental exposure at the Wuhan lab.

Scientific illiteracy is the problem here. Those who are scientifically literate understand what he's saying and how science works. Those who are scientifically illiterate, don't. Scientific illiteracy is a plague in the US to counter Covid in its severity. In Covid alone, it lead to possibly 400,000 extra deaths. It will possibly end the world through denial of the effects of climate change. But, you all keep being you. Morons.

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

Now, Dalgleish and Sørensen have authored a new study, which concludes that 'SARS-Coronavirus-2 has no credible natural ancestor' and that it is 'beyond reasonable doubt' that the virus was created through 'laboratory manipulation'.

In the 22-page paper which is set to be published in the scientific journal Quarterly Review of Biophysics Discovery, the scientists describe their months-long 'forensic analysis', looking back at experiments done at the Wuhan lab between 2002 and 2019.

Digging through archives of journals and databases, Dalgleish and Sørensen pieced together how Chinese scientists, some working in concert with American universities, allegedly built the tools to create the coronavirus.

Much of the work was centered around controversial 'Gain of Function' research – temporarily outlawed in the US under the Obama administration.

Gain of Function involves tweaking naturally occurring viruses to make them more infectious, so that they can replicate in human cells in a lab, allowing the virus's potential effect on humans to be studied and better understood.

Dalgleish and Sørensen claim that scientists working on Gain of Function projects took a natural coronavirus 'backbone' found in Chinese cave bats and spliced onto it a new 'spike', turning it into the deadly and highly transmissible SARS-Cov-2.

One tell-tale sign of alleged manipulation the two men highlighted was a row of four amino acids they found on the SARS-Cov-2 spike.

In an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com, Sørensen said the amino acids all have a positive charge, which cause the virus to tightly cling to the negatively charged parts of human cells like a magnet, and so become more infectious.

But because, like magnets, the positively charged amino acids repel each other, it is rare to find even three in a row in naturally occurring organisms, while four in a row is 'extremely unlikely,' the scientist said.

'The laws of physics mean that you cannot have four positively charged amino acids in a row. The only way you can get this is if you artificially manufacture it,' Dalgleish told DailyMail.com.

Their new paper says these features of SARS-Cov-2 are 'unique fingerprints' which are 'indicative of purposive manipulation', and that 'the likelihood of it being the result of natural processes is very small.'

'A natural virus pandemic would be expected to mutate gradually and become more infectious but less pathogenic which is what many expected with the COVID-19 pandemic but which does not appear to have happened,' the scientists wrote.

'The implication of our historical reconstruction, we posit now beyond reasonable doubt, of the purposively manipulated chimeric virus SARS-CoV-2 makes it imperative to reconsider what types of Gain of Function experiments it is morally acceptable to undertake.

'Because of wide social impact, these decisions cannot be left to research scientists alone.'

During a Senate hearing on Wednesday, White House chief medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci admitted he was not certain US funding for researchers at the Wuhan lab was not spent on controversial and risky Gain of Function experiments.

'How do you know they didn't lie to you and use the money for gain of function research anyway?' Louisiana Senator John Kennedy asked Fauci.

'You never know,' he replied, but added that scientists at the lab are 'trustworthy'.

National Institutes of Health director Dr. Francis Collins told the hearing that US-funded scientists at the lab 'were not approved by NIH for doing gain of function research.'

In another striking claim contained in the research paper, Dalgleish and Sørensen say they have evidence that after the pandemic began, Chinese scientists took samples of the COVID-19 virus and 'retro-engineered' it, making it appear as if it had evolved naturally.

They said they were suspicious of a raft of new strains suddenly entered into gene databases by predominantly Chinese scientists early in 2020, years after they were recorded as being collected.

'We think that there have been retro-engineered viruses created,' Dalgleish told DailyMail.com. 'They've changed the virus, then tried to make out it was in a sequence years ago.'

In their paper, Dalgleish and Sørensen also pointed to 'deliberate destruction, concealment or contamination of data' in Chinese labs and noted that 'Chinese scientists who wished to share their knowledge have not been able to do so or have disappeared.'

'It appears that preserved virus material and related information have been destroyed. Therefore we are confronted with large gaps in data which may never be filled,' they wrote.

'Strains 'popped up' after January 2020 are not credible… For a year we have possessed prima facie evidence of retro-engineering in China in early 2020.'

In January last year DailyMail.com revealed that scientists had been warning about the risk of deadly pathogens escaping from the Wuhan lab since it was opened in 2017.

China installed the first of a planned five to seven biolabs designed for maximum safety in Wuhan in 2017, for the purpose of studying the most high-risk pathogens, including the Ebola and the SARS viruses.

Tim Trevan, a Maryland biosafety consultant, told the science journal Nature that year, when the lab was on the cusp of opening, that he worried that China's culture could make the institute unsafe because 'structures where everyone feels free to speak up and openness of information are important.'

In fact, the SARS virus had 'escaped' multiple times from a lab in Beijing, according to the Nature article.

US State Department officials visited the Wuhan institute in 2018 and sent two official warnings back to DC alerting the government to poor safety there, according to the Washington Post.

Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory, housed at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, was China's first lab to be rated biosafety level 4, the most secure classification.

But Sørensen said that he believes the virus escaped from lower security areas of the institute, where he believes Gain of Function research was performed.

'We have seen lab leaks and we know it's happening. We also know from the reports we've seen, that coronavirus is worked on in Biosafety Level 2 or 3 labs. If they do Gain of Function in such labs, what do you expect?' he said.

In February 2020 a molecular biomechanics researcher at South China University of Technology, Botao Xiao, published a paper claiming 'the killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan,' highlighting safety issues at the institute.

Xiao withdrew the paper weeks later after Chinese authorities denied any accidents at the lab.

The same month, a group of 27 scientists wrote a statement in top journal The Lancet, saying they 'strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that covid-19 does not have a natural origin' and 'overwhelmingly conclude that this coronavirus originated in wildlife.'

Three of the authors later told the Wall Street Journal that they now believe a lab accident is worth consideration as an explanation for the origins of covid-19.

Dalgleish told DailyMail.com that he believed resistance to the theory that COVID-19 is a man-made, escaped virus comes from scientists fearful that the revelation would shut down their field.

'This looks like a weak defense to protect the discipline so that this type of genetic engineering will not be interfered with,' he said. 'I make no bones about it. The Gain of Function engineering should have been banned ages ago.'

R132 Blah blah blah...Why didn't Trump stop them...Blah Blah Blah

Do you have a better source than the Daily Mail - that loosely sourced sensationalist newspaper?

If SARS-COV-2 came from a lab, why did Trump eliminate CDC on-site inspectors who could have traced its origins through interviews with staff? Being a corrupt gangster, Trump got rid of them for some payment to Jared or himself. Trump did not expect it to spread worldwide - he doesn't understand how epidemiology works. He never thought it come back to bite him in his ass.

r127 - No, quit drinking in 2014.

r129 - his surrogates were ALL OVER THE RIGHT-WING mediasphere. Essentially one of the hosts would have a "credentialed guest" who then parroted the Trump talking points. It's effective. And anyone with a degree in something would be introduced as a doctor from nowhere university. Of course, they received grants afterward.

Early on - late 2019 - the Chinese just bribed Trump. He is corrupt as hell. Is that a surprise for you?

[quote] his surrogates were ALL OVER THE RIGHT-WING mediasphere. Essentially one of the hosts would have a "credentialed guest" who then parroted the Trump talking points.

Even Tucker Carlson holds Trump and other Republicans accountable like with Kristi Noem recently. If I were being generous though and gave you not only Tucker but all of Fox News, then what the hell should we make of every other left wing media outlet who literally parrot eachothers talking points word for word. They constantly use identity politics to deflect and distract from stories like this one. Corporate Democrats control nearly the entirety of the media. Other than Fox News, which other than Tucker, it itself corporate leaning (but much less so), you have alternative media, which the left tries to discredit on a daily basis because the very nature of independent media threatens their business empire.

Although neither has been independently verified, there is a lot more evidence of a China engaging in a massive coverup than there is of Trump accepting bribes (another left wing talking point which is ironic given how many of those who work in media have conflicts of interest). You sound just as conspiratorial as the people you are trying to denounce but are so brainwashed you can't see it.

r137- if you are educated, you can make your own mind.

The daily mail merely reported on the 22 page study.

I'm sure we will be hearing more about this soon

Jesus, R132. If this turns out to be true, the implications would be staggering.

The Washington Post has a really detailed timeline about the search for the source of the virus. I'm leaning more towards the lab theory.

Suddenly?

And there you have it at R132-R134.

We always knew it came from the chinese, and I also always suspected that they manufactured the virus.

Now we have the proof. Scientific evidence.

Those fuckers are evil. They are a threat to humanity.

It's up to Western countries to decide what to do about it. The ball is in our court.

Let's see if our governments have the guts to do it.

R131 The scientifically literate realize immediately that they are being talked down to when Fauci speaks.

One of the puzzling aspects for the proponents of the natural origins hypothesis is that after all this time we still have not been able to identify the intermediary animal. It took about 2-3 months to identify the civet with SARS Cov1 and maybe 6 months to identify the dromedary (camel) with MERS. We are pretty far into SARS Cov2 and still nothing despite efforts to do so and dead ends with some animals.

I find this all utterly fascinating.

I think the most plausible theory is that there was no malice, but Chinese researchers fucked up. They were playing with fire (a de-fanged "live-virus" vaccine for SARS) that appeared to safely and effectively work for kids, but turned them into silent carriers by mistake & subsequently spread to old people as Covid 19.

Put another way... NOT a "bio-weapon", just proof that "Jurassic Park" wasn't far from the truth... it's REALLY HARD to keep genies bottled up once you've let them free, even with good intentions.

You really are desperate to deflect from and defend china, aren't you R146?

Either you're getting paid by them, or you're one of them.

I agree, R144. But, the scientifically illiterate can't even understand the dumbed down version. They have no clue how science works. As a scientist if something is impossible and you will almost never get a 'yes' in response, especially if it's currently an area that is being intensely studied.

[quote]We always knew it came from the chinese, and I also always suspected that they manufactured the virus. Now we have the proof. Scientific evidence.

It may well be that the virus was manufactured in a Chinese lab, but the unvetted speculations of two researchers is not "proof."

R149 Don’t worry, Ming Li will be holding a press conference shortly.

Interesting summary in the Guardian.

As usual, the neutered West will continue to do absolutely nothing, while china kills everyone on the planet.

It's not just two researchers. Try better.

R153, you can find hundreds of scientists who claim climate change is not a real thing. You can find hundreds of scientists from last year who claimed that covid was a hoax. You can find hundreds of scientists that claim the vaccines are going to implant chips and make you infertile. Luckily for the intelligent people of the world, there are MILLIONS of other scientists who aren't nuts.

They are still doing experiments at the lab. FUCK CHINA!

[quote] You can find hundreds of scientists from last year who claimed that covid was a hoax. You can find hundreds of scientists that claim the vaccines are going to implant chips and make you infertile.

It would be fun to see you scramble to find and name these hundreds of scientists that you, without evidence, claim exist.

[quote]As usual, the neutered West will continue to do absolutely nothing, while china kills everyone on the planet.

70 years ago China would have been bombed to oblivion over something like this.

Here ya go, R156.

I really wonder if you even read the rest of my post.

r158, your link doesn’t refer to the two claims you made. Keep digging.

Here are 31,000 climate change denying scientists...

Right, R159, because creationist scientists don't prove the fact that scientists can be found who believe anything. I've provided you with two huge lists now. Go read up on the bios of these idiots and draw your own conclusions. I'm not here to do your thinking for you. I'm not sure who usually does your thinking for you, but I feel sorry for them.

R144

You tread on thin ice criticizing Saint Fauci!

Odd how you weren't able to even think that the lab had something to do with it last year without being labeled a racist or MAGA supporter.

Now the liberal media is starting to take it seriously.

Trump was actually right about something. (stopped clock etc.)

Trump was making a wild guess R163, he didn't make an informed comment.

I shall be referring to it as the China Virus from now on, because now it's clear that it the technically correct term.

Why is only the U.S, looking into this? What's the position of the UK, Germany, Brazil, etc? They all got hit with the virus. Do they think it was the Wuhan Lab as well?

The only people with more to lose than China are the multinationals. So it's unlikely in our corporate dictatorship of a world we'll ever know the truth.

UK intelligence is also looking into this.

r160, your quote I referenced was “You can find hundreds of scientists from last year who claimed that covid was a hoax. You can find hundreds of scientists that claim the vaccines are going to implant chips and make you infertile.”

You still haven’t shown a list for either one. You failed.

Inside China’s exhaustive search for COVID-positive animals that don’t exist

It’s been a fruit-less bat search.

China has tested more than 50,000 animals, including thousands of bats, to find evidence of COVID-19’s origins — amid a renewed international focus on whether the virus actually leaked from a laboratory.

Studies started soon after the first case was officially registered in Wuhan in December 2019, with the local wet market soon closed down and eyed as a likely source for the contagion that has now killed more than 3.5 million people worldwide.

Since then, tens of thousands of animals have been tested, not just bats — the source of similar viruses — but also pigs, goats and geese, noted the MIT Technology Review.

Yet Liang Wannian, the lead Chinese researcher who worked with the World Health Organization (WHO) in its controversial study of the origins, has admitted that the pandemic “remains an unsolved mystery” despite the nation’s apparent exhaustive studies.

The closest match was a bat virus with a genetic code that was 96.2 percent identical to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, previous reports have noted.

However, that was taken during research on bats in caves in Yunnan province, hundreds of miles from the epicenter of Wuhan.

That research was carried out by the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), the lab in the epicenter that has long denied repeated accusations, including from international leaders like former President Donald Trump, that it has not revealed everything it knows about the pandemic’s origins.

The WIV and its chief scientist, “bat woman” Shi Zhengli, had already found international notoriety with pivotal breakthroughs over SARS, a similar coronavirus that emerged from China in 2003.

With that outbreak, however, researchers were able to quickly find a nearly identical virus in Himalayan palm civet cats and raccoon dogs — both eaten locally — during testing, the MIT Technology Review noted.

The WHO’s report still believes the COVID-19 virus likely originated from bats, yet the lab in the epicenter that is a world leader in researching such cases still has yet to find a source, China and the lab have repeatedly claimed.

Yet the Wuhan institute removed its online database of studies in late 2019, just before the outbreak started, which Zhengli said was done to protect the lab and its staff from attacks.

Former US national security adviser Matthew Pottinger is among many who believe that it is “very much possible that it did emerge from the laboratory.”

“It’s possible they caused a pandemic they were intending to prevent,” Pottinger told MIT Technology Review, repeating earlier warnings.

Jamie Metzl, a technology and national security fellow at the Atlantic Council think tank, told the publication that it was “crazy” that there were still no clear answers on what caused the pandemic.

“Everyone on Earth is a stakeholder in this,” he insisted.

So - Josh Marshall makes an interesting point about the Washington Post article. Doug Feith's son is one of the proponents of the leak hypothesis. Doug is called the architect of the Iraq War, is a member of a super-right wing think tank. He has been accused of skewing data to support war and the promotion of costly weapons systems.

Two clear signs the that a science writer doesn’t know what he or she is talking about:

1) the idea that China, which spends over 10% of its federal budget on R&D and doesn’t have much in the way of research restrictions would have to turn to a highly restricted piddly subaward from the US to do GOF research. (r&d spending is less than 2% of the US budget)

2) disbelief that a microbiology lab doing surveillance might, in the normal course of business, have bat samples from hundreds of miles away.

Any article containing either idiotic comment should be read with a great deal of suspicion.

Luc Montagnier

April 2020

Is that the new democratic talking point r164.

It wasn't exactly a wild guess and you didn't have to be a genius (which Trump isn't) to guess that since the virus started in Wuhan and there is a lab in Wuhan that works with virus......well it was a pretty easy guess. If Trump hadn't have said it the media probably would have and taken the opposite side from him. Trump hatred was that strong.

oh and r164 Joy Behar said the exact same thing on The View the other day. Did you get it there?

R154, what's your point? Pulling numbers out of your ass does not advance this discussion.

It's a viable hypothesis. Period.

My point, R176, is that the hypotheses of two scientists being held up as proof of anything is lunacy. The real scientists, meanwhile, are saying all possibilities are on the table. In case any of you are interested in actual science versus imaginative fiction...

[quote]They constantly use identity politics to deflect and distract from stories like this one.

Fucking idiot. Trump and the GOP's entire existence is based solely on identity politics.

R177, why do you insist in that canard that it's only 2 scientists. That's false and you must know that.

@r147

> Either you're getting paid by them, or you're one of them.

Oh, fuck off already and quit making a false dichotomy. It's ENTIRELY legit to theorize that c19 resulted from an experiment that went horribly, horribly wrong, without simultaneously insisting it was an act of war. Mark Twain himself noted, "never attribute to malice that which can be adequately be explained by incompetence or stupidity".

The idea of deliberately infecting people with a mild virus to gain immunity from a worse one is a very old idea. It's PRECISELY how smallpox vaccine works. It's generally frowned upon nowadays, because we've seen that viruses have a nasty habit of randomly mutating in the wild, but it's ENTIRELY plausible that Chinese researchers stumbled upon what APPEARED to be a tame SARS strain that gave broad immunity while presenting mild symptoms (in everyone they tested), then decided to deliberately use it as a smallpox-like vaccine.

Maybe they knew it was dangerous to certain people, so they only gave it to those they "knew" would have only mild symptoms... except, some then became carriers & infected those for whom it WAS life-threatening.

Or, maybe it was tame for everyone, but it mutated in a carrier, and THAT became SARS-COVD-2 when it spread.

As for secrecy, well... duh... of COURSE they don't want to admit it. You don't even have to blame "China", because individual researchers (facing anything from defunding and/or unemployment all the way up to prosecution & imprisonment or execution) have plenty of motive on their own to cover things up. And as the war drums beat, the circle of motive only grows stronger as the coverup snowballs & takes on a life of its own.

That this possibility (Chinese researchers at fault, without "China" per se being actively malicious) is even CONTROVERSIAL shows just how far the level of rational discourse has fallen over the past few years.

Scott Gottlieb, who headed the Food and Drug Administration from 2017 to 2019, said Sunday it’s highly possible Covid-19 originated in a Chinese lab as “these kinds of leaks happen all the time,” a high-profile endorsement of a once-fringe theory about the virus’s origins that has recently picked up steam.

Speaking on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Gottlieb, an FDA commissioner under former President Donald Trump, explained it’s not rare for viruses to spread this way, adding “even here in the United States we’ve had mishaps.”

Elite laboratories in the U.S. have on multiple occasions seen high-risk pathogens make their way into the outside world due to safety lapses, such as in 2014, when a deadly bacteria escaped a primate research center in New Orleans, infecting monkeys that weren’t intended to be used for experiments.

China has seen multiple of these types of leaks, Gottlieb said, citing outbreaks of SARS in China in the early 2000s that the World Health Organization later linked to researchers in a Beijing lab.

Gottlieb also drew attention to prior safety concerns about the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the lab where proponents of the leak theory suspect the virus originated from.

The Washington Post previously reported that in 2018, two years before the pandemic, the U.S. state department had been concerned about safety at the Wuhan Institute of Virology as researchers studied coronavirus in bats.

The ex-FDA chief referenced the Wall Street Journal’s explosive report last week that three of the institute’s workers were hospitalized in November 2019 with Covid-like symptoms, saying: “We now have evidence that some lab workers became infected right at the time this virus was believed to have been first introduced.”

All this has meant “the side of the ledger that suggested this could have come out of a lab has continued to expand,” Gottlieb said. Meanwhile, “the side of the ledger that suggests this could have come from a zoonotic source, come out of nature, really hasn’t budged.”

Despite a lack of concrete evidence in support of the lab-leak theory, last week’s report from the WSJ, citing previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence, resurfaced debate over the origins of the coronavirus. This followed a group of 18 prominent scientists in mid-May deeming the lab theory “viable” and pushing for it to be more closely investigated. The suspicion that Covid-19 originated in a laboratory was initially dismissed by many top researchers, who maintained a more likely explanation is that the virus came from an animal, likely a bat. However, as stated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on its website, no exact conclusion has been drawn about how the virus was initially introduced. Meanwhile, the virus’s origins have evolved into a partisan dispute on Capitol Hill where Republicans are accusing Democrats of ignoring the theory early on in the pandemic. President Biden on Wednesday called on intelligence agencies to “redouble their efforts” to probe the virus’s origin.

Gottlieb and other scientists have emphasized the importance of getting to the bottom of Covid’s origins. Also appearing during a televised interview Sunday morning, Dr. Peter Hotez, the co-director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine development, warned a lack of a decisive conclusion will lead to future pandemics. “There’s going to be a Covid-26 and Covid-32 unless we fully understand the origins of Covid-19,” he told NBCs “Meet the Press.”

A lot of people are upset at these revelations for strictly partisan reasons but this could lead to a better outcome in the grand scheme of things. Implicit in the naturally evolved theory was that people would have to continue to adhere to overreaching safety protocols indefinitely, which would have continued to benefit big business and high tech who saw record profits during the pandemic. It's much easier to impose new safety standards on testing than it is to impose restrictions on consumer travel, and far less likely to propagate the great reset.

[quote] Despite a lack of concrete evidence in support of the lab-leak theory,

Just for the record, not even knowing what those terms mean for this case, there is a "lack of concrete evidence" in support of the natural origins (zoonotic) hypothesis as well.

These are not "theories", these are "hypotheses".

There are labs all over the world working with deadly viruses. We had a lab leak that could have resulted in massive deaths. Fortunately, it was a benign virus. They were working on ebola and there is a variant called Ebola Reston. The virus got out but fortunately, it didn't make humans sick like Ebola Zaire. Germany is working with Marberg which is also a hemorrhagic fever virus. It's conceivable that one of those deadly viruses could escape from a lab.

I have to laugh at R185.

Everytime someone points to china doing something bad, you instantly point to Africa with some kind of weird blame.

Talk about DEFLECTION!

Why is OP lined out? It was NPR article. People are offended by even the discussion of the Covid origin? For those who FF'd OP, pleased explain your reasoning.

Ummmm R186 that lab leak was in Virginia, not Africa.

Lab leaks can happen anywhere bio safety protocols are not properly followed.

[quote] People are offended by even the discussion of the Covid origin?

Anything that might make Trump look better is seen as bad.

[quote] Why is OP lined out

Because internet trolls from china don't want people to know the truth.

Don't forget that people can post here from all over the world.

If china doesn't want people to know about something, they'll try to get it blocked.

Just like they do in their own dictator state.

They're trying to do the same thing to Americans. Because they can. On the internet.

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

Now, he said, people are beginning to take the theory seriously, giving him a sense of 'vindication' after some 'extraordinary behaviour in the scientific community which successfully shut down any debate' which he said could amount to bullying.

He added that people not taking the theory seriously could have been a symptom of the Trump regime in the US, with the former president's outlandish allegations so often being dismissed.

'In the end it’s going to boil down to scientific evidence because the data is no longer available unless some courageous Chinese individual, probably a scientist, comes forward,' Sir Richard added.

He also case doubt over whether - if the allegations were found to be true - China would pay reparations for the global damage caused by the coronavirus, with China's relations with the rest of the world in that scenario becoming unpredictable.

An inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus should no longer be left to the World Health Organisation (WHO), Sir Richard added. The UN's health body has been criticised for failing to investigate the issue sufficiently.

British intelligence operatives now believe the theory, once discarded as a conspiracy theory, is 'feasible'.

They are now investigating the possibility that a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a Chinese research facility, sparked the global crisis which has sparked more than 3.5 million deaths.

Western intelligence agencies had seemingly written off the 'remote' chance that the laboratory - where research into bat-derived coronaviruses is conducted - had played a role, but a recent reassessment has meant the leak theory is considered 'feasible', sources say.

The development, which Beijing has angrily denied, has prompted US diplomatic sources to share their concerns 'we are one wet market or bio lab away from the next spillover', The Sunday Times reports.

Chairman of the foreign affairs select committee, Tom Tugendhat, said: 'The silence coming from Wuhan is troubling. We need to open the crypt and see what happened to be able to protect ourselves in the future. That means starting an investigation, along with partners around the world and in the WHO.'

Last week US President Joe Biden told intelligence agencies to look into the lab leak theory, along with other possible origins for the coronavirus, and deliver a report to him within 90 days.

British intelligence is working alongside their US counterparts.

A western intelligence source familiar with British involvement said: 'There might be pockets of evidence that take us one way, and evidence that takes us another way.

'The Chinese will lie either way. I don't think we will ever know.'

Vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi said a World Health Organisation investigation must be able to fully investigate the origins of the pandemic.

He told Sky News this week: 'I think it's really important that the WHO is allowed to conduct its investigation unencumbered into the origins of this pandemic and that we should leave no stone unturned to understand why - not only because of the current pandemic that has swept the world but also for future-proofing the world's capability to deal with pandemics.'

Scientists who had called for an inquiry into the lab leak theory say they have been silenced by colleagues and journals over the past year.

Jamie Metzl, human genome editing advisor to the WHO, said: 'Since the earliest days of the pandemic there were a small number of leading scientists who took it upon themselves to enforce this kind of orthodoxy.

'We were ostracised and called conspiracy theorists.'

The origins of the virus are under fresh scrutiny with the collapse of the scientific consensus that it emerged from human contact with an infected animal, with some experts now arguing that the virus was man-made.

David Asher, who led a task force investigating the origins of Covid, said evidence pointed to a leak from a biological weapons program at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which the Chinese government has repeatedly denied.

President Biden ordered the intelligence community to re-examine how the virus originated, including the lab accident theory. He ordered a 90-day intelligence push to get to the bottom of the question.

His announcement followed the revelation that a previously undisclosed intelligence report had been made to the White House, claiming that several researchers at the Wuhan institute were hospitalized with illness in November 2019. The document was uncovered this week by the Wall Street Journal.

Both the US and Britain are stepping up demands for the World Health Organisation to take a closer look into the origins of the virus, including a new visit to China where the first human infections were detected.

US health officials have also come under fire for allegedly funding researchers' controversial and risky experiments at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

US House Republican Whip Steve Scalise and more than 200 of his GOP colleagues have also called for Nancy Pelosi to direct her Democrat-led committees to investigate China's complicity in causing the Covid pandemic.

In a letter to the Democratic House Speaker, the Republicans said there is 'mounting evidence the pandemic started in a Chinese lab' and the Chinese Communist Party 'covered it up'.

'If that is the case, the CCP is responsible for the deaths of almost 600,000 Americans and millions more worldwide. These questions about the CCP's liability are not a diversion, as you falsely claimed,' the letter reads.

Meanwhile, an explosive new study claims Chinese scientists created Covid in a Wuhan lab, then tried to cover their tracks by reverse-engineering versions of the virus to make it look like it evolved naturally from bats.

The paper's authors, British Professor Angus Dalgleish and Norwegian scientist Dr. Birger Sørensen, wrote that they have had 'prima facie evidence of retro-engineering in China' for a year - but were ignored by academics and major journals.

Dalgleish is a professor of oncology at St George's University, London, and is best known for his breakthrough creating the first working 'HIV vaccine', to treat diagnosed patients and allow them to go off medication for months.

Sørensen, a virologist, is chair of pharmaceutical company, Immunor, which developed a coronavirus vaccine candidate called Biovacc-19. Dalgleish also has share options in the firm.

The shocking allegations in the study include accusations of 'deliberate destruction, concealment or contamination of data' at Chinese labs, and it notes the silencing and disappearance of scientists in the communist country who spoke out. The journal article, obtained by DailyMail.com, is set to make waves among the scientific community, as the majority of experts have until recently staunchly denied the origins of COVID-19 were anything other than a natural infection leaping from animals to humans.

While analyzing COVID-19 samples last year in an attempt to create a vaccine, Dalgleish and Sørensen discovered 'unique fingerprints' in the virus that they say could only have arisen from manipulation in a laboratory.

They said they tried to publish their findings but were rejected by major scientific journals which were at the time resolute that the virus jumped naturally from bats or other animals to humans.

Even when former MI6 chief Sir Richard spoke out publicly saying the scientists' theory should be investigated, the idea was dismissed as 'fake news'.

Over a year later, leading academics, politicians and the media finally flipped, and have begun to contemplate the possibility that COVID-19 escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China - a lab where experiments included manipulating viruses to increase their infectiousness in order to study their potential effects on humans.

Dalgleish and Sørensen have authored a new study, which concludes that 'SARS-Coronavirus-2 has no credible natural ancestor' and that it is 'beyond reasonable doubt' that the virus was created through 'laboratory manipulation'.

In the 22-page paper which is set to be published in the scientific journal Quarterly Review of Biophysics Discovery, the scientists describe their months-long 'forensic analysis', looking back at experiments done at the Wuhan lab between 2002 and 2019.

CHina has a very scary government

Just give OP more WW and the line will disappear.

Lead author of WSJ story also co-wrote articles later retracted by the NYT, including the one about WMD in Iraq

Just to point out something that SHOULD be intellectually-obvious, it's possible for c19 to be "man-made WITHOUT being intended as a "bioweapon", but rather, with the intent of creating a "de-fanged" mild variant of SARS that would confer broad immunity while causing little harm. China has been ravaged by SARS every few years for decades, and was clearly desperate to find a way to stop it.

More likely than not, the virus that became SARS-COVD-2 was the disastrous outcome of what they THOUGHT would be a relatively innocuous solution. And when it went badly, everyone from the scientists involved to the CCP scrambled to cover it up to save their own skin. At this point, nobody in China would DARE to admit anything, because everyone "higher up" would instantly try to scapegoat them to deflect blame from themselves.

Calls for "reparations" are political masturbation. Even if China were proven beyond doubt to be 100% at fault (albeit, of negligence & coverup, not intentional malice), its ultimate response would be somewhere between a BP-like "We're sorry" and outright "fuck you". Not even the US would dare to go to war against China, and literally nobody else could do shit to harm China. Attempting to cut off Chinese exports would throw the global economy into a depression that would make 1929 and 2009 look TAME by comparison.

China might not be powerful enough to "win" a war, but it COULD be one hell of a "spoiler" who leaves EVERYONE bruised & bleeding for decades (even if they themselves were erased in the process). Militarily, China has three ready-made hostages right next door: Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea... all of whom are loyal US allies whom we wouldn't DARE to abandon (morally OR strategically). If we sold them out, Europe would never trust us again (nor would anyone else).

And all this assumes there WAS NO actual malice on China's part, just an innocent fuckup and cover-up. If there WAS actual malice, ${deity} help us all, because THEN the outcome will be IMMEASURABLY worse for everyone. China then would skip "We're sorry" and go straight to "fuck you, what are you gonna DO about it?" 6 months before missiles filled with autonomous killer drones and robots rain down on America & Europe and start indiscriminately shooting anything with a pulse. We might have nukes, but China could throw 10-50 million armed robots at us.

Whatever the outcome of an investigation may be, the origin of the virus is China. Even If it didn't come from a lab, the risk of wet markets has been known for decades and they still don't close them. So yes, either way, China is responsible for covid.

The consequences must be diversification of trade, shutting China completely out of any economical, educational and social relations.

It's so funny how the received wisdom of the pundits has gone from "Oh no, that is just absolutely impossible!," to "Well, you know there just doesn't seem to be any other plausible explanation now, does there?" And it's happened in the course of just about one week...

Here's the way I view this: what difference does it make?

Are we going to bomb China if we find out the country is responsible? Are we going to do ANYTHING about it? Is it going to change our China policy?

Maybe we should develop our own virus that only affects Chinese peeps worldwide. Genocide anyone?

This is just witch hunting on an international scale. Everyone will just continue to believe what they want to believe anyway, so what's the point?.

^It's an "accident" that has killed millions of people, and it is something people have been warning about the possibility of for many years now. Don't be ridiculous, it HAS to be investigated. China's unwillingness to help do that, and likely destruction of the relevant evidence already, speaks volumes re their responsibility for this. Nicholson Baker's article on this, published back in January, reported that the suspect lab was famous for being "filthy"...Yes, we all need to know exactly how this came to pass.

[quote] Are we going to do ANYTHING about it?

I don't know, maybe we can prevent it from happening again?

As people are held accountable for their participation in the coverup, we need to look at DL’s resident propagandists who in the past falsely stated that the lab leak theory was debunked and who have consistently been apologists for Fauci, even for his infamous and intentionally deceptive advice against the public wearing masks.

NPR is coving this over and over again. I turn on the radio (in my car) and they were talking about this again. Though, there is in findings, no data because they have not funded the studies. China does not want them. If it is true, China going to block them, obviously. If it is not true, China does not want a lot of scientist from Democracies running around in China. China abuses animals and humans.

The best way to deal with this is to develop International Laws through WHO and UN to prevent this type of accidental or purposeful bio-organism weapon. You know, international regulation. The important activities and organizations that the republicans are always against for some reason. IT is strange that the magas/republicans are so interested in what would be regulated by International laws and new international multilaterals. Maybe they can get it now?

Did you see what Covid did? This is why we need WHO and the UN. We need international laws and regulations. We need international cooperation between people on Earth. We have to work through governments, even governments that are not Democratic. and are oppressive to their own people.

HELLO

WAKE THE FUCK UP!

[quote] Here's the way I view this: what difference does it make?

It matters a great deal. We need to know if this was manipulated in the lab or it was a naturally occurring event.

If the virus was naturally occurring in the way it "evolved" then we must know that. It's "evolution" is novel and very scary. It evolved from zoonotic to person to person transmission from the get-go and that is abnormal. They have looked for some population/environment where it may have evolved in this one function and they cannot find it.

We do have world wide "regulations" for labs and research. They are developed and supposedly enforced by international organizations. But they depend on cooperation from the participating labs and research organizations. We continued to fund and promote the funding of Chinese labs when it was known they were not adhering to the appropriate Basic Safety Level protocols - BSLs.

Those people who fund, monitor and "regulate" such research institutions were the major part of the mob which deliberately lied about another plausible hypothesis of the origins of SARS CoVid2 (lab leak). These same people also did everything they could to destroy the credibility of those who tried to promote a scientific and objective look into the origins of SARS CoVid2. And they did it to cover up their own actions, misdeeds, negligence and to protect their financial interests and reputations.

People like that cannot be trusted.

[quote] If the virus was naturally occurring in the way it "evolved" then we must know that. It's "evolution" is novel and very scary.

Why are people not outraged that these paid researchers were intentionally scaring the public? These are the people we trust with our lives.

To those people ITT who are trying to gaslight everyone into believing there wasn't a culture of silence around the lab leak hypothesis:

Okay help me.

If this C19 came from Wuhan how come the strain of flu in Europe tested out to be of European in origin? Last year when the US was in lockdown there were more strains that kept being discovered all over the world. This thing mutated within a few months time from Wuhan?

^Yes, very easily so. It is happening continuously, nothing odd about that, and in fact it is fully to be expected. It's one reason why infectious viruses are so frightening.

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

The majority of the DoD funding came from the DTRA, a military branch with a mission to 'counter and deter weapons of mass destruction and improvised threat networks.'

EHA also received $64.7 million from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), $13 million from Health and Human Services, which includes the National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control, $2.3 million from the Department of Homeland Security, and $2.6 million from the National Science Foundation.

A government funding figure of $3.4 million was widely reported, after White House chief medical advisor Anthony Fauci was questioned in a Senate hearing on how much money the National Institutes of Health sent to the Wuhan lab via its grants to EcoHealth Alliance in 2019.

But the total grant figures including Pentagon funding dwarf that number.

Researchers James Baratta and Mariamne Everett assembled grant filings from US government agencies to EHA, which were published on popular science site Independent Science News in December.

The site found EHA's declaration of its vast military funding is nestled deep in the 'Privacy Policy' section of its website, under the title 'EcoHealth Alliance Policy Regarding Conflict of Interest in Research'.

In the disclosure EHA says it is 'the recipient of various grant awards from federal agencies including the National Institute of Health, the National Science Foundation, US Fish and Wildlife Service, and the US Agency for International Development and the Department of Defense.'

It does not disclose the size of its DoD funding.

In 2014 the Obama administration outlawed gain of function research, such as the experiments funded by EHA, after concerns were raised among scientists that it could lead to a global pandemic from a genetically enhanced virus escaping a lab.

But EHA reportedly continued to legally fund the practice, using a loophole that allowed for the research in cases 'urgently necessary to protect the public health or national security.'

One notable EHA 'policy advisor' is David Franz, a former commander at the principal US government biowarfare and biodefense facility Fort Detrick.

Franz was an official in the United Nations Special Commission which inspected for bioweapons in Iraq.

The charity's head, Daszak, has been accused of orchestrating a behind-the-scenes 'bullying' campaign to ensure the blame for covid-19 did not fall on the Wuhan lab he funded.

The 55-year-old worked closely with the lab's so-called 'bat woman,' Shi Zhengli, in their studies of coronaviruses.

In February 2020 Daszak persuaded more than two dozen other scientists to sign off on a letter he had written to highly respected medical journal The Lancet, that was seen as so influential that it cowed most experts into refusing even to consider that the virus could have been man-made and escaped from the Wuhan institute.

Former high-level Clinton administration staffer Jamie Metzl, who now sits on the World Health Organization's advisory committee on human genome editing, told DailyMail.com that the Lancet letter 'was scientific propaganda and a form of thuggery and intimidation.'

Freedom of Information Act disclosures revealed Daszak tried to distance his charity from the letter to make it appear it was coming from 'a community supporting our colleagues.'

The charity chief told his fellow signatories in an email that the letter would not be sent under the EcoHealth logo 'and will not be identifiable as coming from any one organization or person.'

The joint letter, published in the journal on February 19 last year, praised the Chinese 'who continue to save lives and protect global health during the challenge of the Covid-19 outbreak' and added 'We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that Covid-19 does not have a natural origin.'

Despite his close connections to the Chinese lab, Daszak was also picked by the World Health Organization (WHO) to be part of its 13-member team that was tasked with finding the cause of the pandemic which began in Wuhan, a city of some 11 million people in Central China.

Metzl told DailyMail.com the appointment was a 'massive and outrageous conflict of interest,' allowing a man who had significant financial and reputational stakes in discrediting lab leak theories to investigate those theories.

Prominent scientists have criticized the WHO probe, which dismissed lab leak theories, as lackluster and incomplete.

In a Freedom of Information disclosure of Fauci's emails obtained by Buzzfeed last month, Daszak thanked the White House doctor for pushing back on the theory that covid-19 was man made.

'I just wanted to say a personal thank you on behalf of our staff and collaborators, for publicly standing up and stating that the scientific evidence supports a natural origin for COVID-19 from a bat-to-human spillover, not a lab release from the Wuhan Institute of Virology,' Daszak wrote in April 2020.

Fauci says the emails have been taken out of context.

EHA's most recent financial statements filed with the IRS say that around 90 per cent of its funding comes from government sources.

The 2019 report says Daszak was paid a total $410,801 for the year, including $311,815 base pay, $42,250 bonus, $24,500 deferred compensation and $32,236 nontaxable benefits.

Covid19 mutations happening in tandem with HIV in impoverished countries.

[quote] f this C19 came from Wuhan how come the strain of flu in Europe tested out to be of European in origin? Last year when the US was in lockdown there were more strains that kept being discovered all over the world. This thing mutated within a few months time from Wuhan?

Viruses mutate. But how they mutate and how quickly are important factors. These variants/strains can be tracked and you can see where they circulated before mutating. They didn't happen overnight. The virus SARS CoVid2's transmission function that went from zoonotic to person-person without leaving a trace anywhere is what is new. That's why it is plausible that the gain of function seen immediately in the SARS Covid2 with its mode of transmission AND the fact that it attacked so many organs of the body immediately upon its emergence may have come from a manipulation in the virus being studied o=in the lab. I mean, that is exactly what they do in the lab with these viruses. That is exactly what they do at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. They speed up the biological evolution of a virus to see what could happen as it moves through a population.

[quote]If this C19 came from Wuhan how come the strain of flu in Europe tested out to be of European in origin?

I think you're confusing the annual flu with covid.

R212-R215 Thank you for reminding us that real journalism still exists. This may not be getting the attention it deserves and it still demonstrates that there are people still committed to the truth.

If true about DTRA using the loophole that’s very interesting.

NIAID went in the opposite direction. Studies that OSTP had carefully worded the pause on gain of function guidelines to avoid closing got closed anyway.

But I still don’t get the weird assumption that If China were doing GOF research, the US would somehow be paying for it. I mean it’s like assuming that Bill Gates paid for Jeff Bezos’ house. Why??? China invests in R&D. They may steal our IP, but they don’t need our money.

US entities absolutely need to subaward to China and other foreign countries to get surveillance data on emerging threats. But there is so reason to subaward experiments. All the terms and conditions of US federal funding flow down to subawardees. And if we are talking DTRA, much of the work is export controlled and some of it is classified. You can’t even have a Chinese post-doc work on export controlled research in the United States (deemed export) without risking prison time, so there’s no way to legally subaward GOF to China on a DTRA.

Export Control violations=prison time for researchers

Here are two issues I have:

First, this is being pushed strongly by people like Steve Scalise and the other right wing loons. It comes in tandem with the release of Fauci's emails. And, the big media companies have been very quick to turn on an dime with very little new actual information. We've been here before.

Second, the people who are most adamant about how important it is that Fauci and others are saying that we should look into this after earlier saying that it was a much less likely scenario (ignoring the fact that those two statements are actually saying the same thing) are the same people who adamantly foam at the mouth about how Fauci is not to be trusted because he once said that they didn't think masks would be required but, after more information came out, changed his position. (Exactly how science works, btw.) Can't have it both ways. You either trust that science evolves based on current data or you don't. Pick one.

R222, the issue is that they had enough data and facts in early 2020 to know that the lab leak hypothesis was quite plausible and maybe more likely than a natural origins hypothesis.

It doesn't matter that there are miscreants who support the alternate hypothesis nor even if they are cheering for it. There will always be those who take advantage of facts and reality for their own political gain. Didn't we do that with Trump. I was thrilled when reality smacked him in the face and helped my politics - but that didn't change the facts.

Please remember that the issue was that there were experts and respected scientists who knew that the lab leak was a plausible hypothesis, many of whom were silenced by bullies covering their own asses. The lab leak is nothing new.

The way Fauci is always chuckling to himself and shaking his head when he talks it's like he's thinking, "Gah this is pointless! Why do I even bother trying to communicate with these retards?!" He is such a condescending prick. I am eagerly awaiting his fall from grace. I hope it's meteoric and that all that's left of him is a stain on the ground. His arrogance is the direct is the reason why gay men still cannot donate blood today if they are sexually active, but it's fine if you're a transwoman who lets men fuck your open wound.

[quote] The way Fauci is always chuckling to himself and shaking his head when he talks it's like he's thinking, "Gah this is pointless! Why do I even bother trying to communicate with these retards?!"

The more Trump supporters hate him, the more people here love him, no matter if 99% of what they say is true. Anyone talking trash to Trump or his supporters gives them a boner.

[quote] gay men still cannot donate blood today if they are sexually active, but it's fine if you're a transwoman who lets men fuck your open wound.

OMG is that true?

Redefining men/women or male/female for purposes such as science, medicine, criminal and other purposeful statistics is a crime.

I doubt the Biden administration would ever prosecute Fauci, so he won’t face imprisonment for what he did until there’s a new administration.

The lunatics seem to have taken over this thread. Gonna "lock him up" are they R227? Hm. where have I heard something similar to that before?

No one ever said the lab leak possibililty was impossible. Science, especially of a novel virus like Covid, works in probabilities and likelihoods and then looks into those by forming hypotheses and testing those hypotheses in multiple ways before forming a conclusion. Former studies of similar conditions are incorporated when necessary to create a fuller picture of the truth.

Also, people are conflating different things in this thread. Natural origin is most probable because that's where viruses develop and there is a genetic similarity between Covid 19 and other known bat viruses that have been being studied for a decade or more. There was an outbreak in some bat cave miners a decade or so ago that matches a lot of the qualities of Covid 19 infection. The wet markets create a huge natural petri dish for cross-species viral formation and spread. So, natural origin is the most likely.

Now, that similar viruses were being studied in a Wuhan lab is also known. An accidental release is also possible. However, still less likely than natural occurence.

The release of a manipulated version is even less likely.

The release of a purposefully created, weaponized virus is almost completely unlikely.

But, they are all possible to a different degree. People who think everything is black and white, this or that, are reactionary, purposeful, and unscientific in their actions, so take what they say with a grain of salt.

They probably had some evidence already in early 2020 that covid came from a lab, but hardly anybody trusted Trump to do the right thing with this information.

R228 is posting from Beijing.

R230 is exactly the type of person I'm talking about.

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

As a journalist who has written about China for more than 25 years, I found this raises disturbing questions and suggested a deeply worrying pattern of deceit.

Photographs have shown Zhengli at work in a white space suit attached to a flexible tube that is linked to a life-support system like an astronaut.

Her lab, originally a Sino-French collaboration, was built to the highest biosecurity levels, despite the deep unease of French secret services who warned the facility was dual-use. Namely that it could be used for the development of biological weapons, as well as more innocent research. Indeed, the Israeli expert on China’s biological warfare programme, Dany Shoham, claims the Wuhan Institute of Virology is a dual-purpose military/civilian institution, and has even suggested the SARS epidemic of 2003 was an accidental product of China’s secret biowarfare programme.

Despite the Beijing government’s systemic culture of extreme secrecy, it’s known that Zhengli experimented on viruses by gene-splicing bits of DNA. The rationale for this work is that they replicate the rapid mutation of viruses in the wild and research would give a head start in manufacturing effective vaccines.

Critics, however, say China (and similar laboratories in America and elsewhere) has risked creating a Frankenstein virus that the world has no protection against – producing a scenario much like the Covid-19 pandemic.

The potential to use such a virus as a devastating biological weapon is obvious, particularly if you have the only vaccine. But worryingly, most of this research – including all published work using live bat coronaviruses that were neither SARS nor Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) – was conducted in laboratories with far less stringent biosecurity. The consequences were predictable.

One lab accident in December 2019 caused 65 staff at the Veterinary Research Institute in the city of Lanzhou to be infected with brucellosis – a bacterial infection that causes fatigue, chills and joint pain, and can take months to treat.

In January last year, a renowned Chinese scientist, Li Ning, was sentenced to 12 years in prison for selling experimental animals to local food markets.

Such was the concern about lax biosecurity in China that Professor Yuan Zhiming, head of biosafety at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, wrote an article for the Journal Of Biosafety And Biosecurity saying that lab maintenance was ‘generally neglected’ and that ‘part-time researchers’ performed the work of skilled staff, which ‘makes it difficult to identify and mitigate potential safety hazards’.

So great were safety concerns that Wuhan’s French collaborators quit the lab project before it opened. There had been (unconfirmed) reports from France that staff used bleach in the decontamination showers which corroded some of the stainless-steel casing, that critical airlocks leaked, and that the sewage disposal system became blocked.

Nevertheless, it is far more likely that SARS or Covid-19 escaped from a biomedical lab with much lower levels of biosecurity.

Last year, nearly 90 such labs were operating in China – such as the Wuhan Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, just 300 yards from the city’s ‘wet’ seafood market that has been touted as the epicentre of the pandemic.

The centre, where bat coronaviruses similar to Covid-19 were studied, is adjacent to the Union Hospital, where the first group of doctors were infected with Covid-19 and where a shrimp-seller from the wet market was identified as one of the first victims of coronavirus on December 16, 2019.

However, the truth is that science does not support the hypothesis that the pandemic started in the wet market. An investigation revealed the market’s traders did not sell bats – the assumed source of the virus. Although a forensic search did find fragments of coronavirus throughout the market, which sold live hedgehogs, badgers, snakes and birds, no infected animal was ever found.

It is not clear whether the virus fragments were shed by animals no longer there or by humans moving through the busy market. Furthermore, only about 20 per cent of the first group of people who tested positive with Covid-19 had any exposure to the market.

It is, though, reasonable to assume that the only Covid-infected bats in Wuhan around the start of the pandemic were being kept at either the Wuhan Centre for Disease Control and Prevention or at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. It is also safe to say that safety standards at both institutions were not high.

ONE thing that is certain about the coronavirus pandemic is that the Chinese government has consistently told lies about the origin, spread and effect of the virus.

According to leaked documents, the Beijing authorities deliberately sought to hide what was going on. They said there were only 44 cases in 2019, but in truth had recorded 200. On February 10, 2020, they declared 2,478 new cases, whereas leaked data shows that 5,918 were logged. The deaths of six healthcare workers by February 10 were never publicly disclosed. Meanwhile, the Beijing government closed a hospital WeChat social media group which had warned of a new SARS-like virus.

Having shut the wet market after finding a cluster of cases there, the authorities tried to blame the outbreak on the market and then focused public campaigns on pointing the finger of responsibility at American troops who had been in Wuhan in autumn 2019 for an athletics event. So what exactly were the Chinese trying to hide?

In the wake of the SARS epidemic in 2003, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a previously obscure institution attached to the city’s university, had been thrust into international prominence. Yet intelligence officials from countries such as France and America had been deeply suspicious of its real purpose for years. After the SARS outbreak, the institute set up a new department devoted to studying emerging infectious disease, headed by Shi Zhengli.

In addition to looking at bat viruses, the Chinese government developed a strong interest in studying the world’s most dangerous infectious diseases, including ebola, nipah, marburg, lassa fever virus and Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever viruses. Very few of these posed a threat to the health of the Chinese people, so was there another reason?

In response to an outbreak of ebola in West Africa, China sent hundreds of specialists to help stop it spreading. They set up hospitals and labs, distributed medical supplies and carried out tests and medical treatments.

Some of these specialists were from Wuhan, and the chief of the mission was Chen Wei, a People’s Liberation Army major general who heads the Institute of Biotechnology at the Academy of Military Medical Sciences and is possibly in charge of its biological warfare division.

Naturally, suspicion grew about Wuhan’s dual biological weapons/scientific research use.

Concerns escalated in July 2019 when Chinese-born scientist Xiangguo Qiu and her husband Keding Cheng were escorted out of Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory where they worked. They were reported to have secretly smuggled samples of the ebola and nipah viruses back to China. Qiu had made at least five trips to Wuhan in 2017-18 alone.

It is puzzling what the motive would have been for smuggling the viruses to China, since its scientists already had samples of ebola. But China has often followed the example of the Soviet Union, which had a bioweapons programme called Biopreparat which used influenza research as a cover story.

The Soviet military hid what it was doing from the outside world – China could therefore conceivably be using an institution such as the Wuhan Institute of Virology as a front for carrying out biological weapons research.

The Wuhan institute is known to have built up a biobank of disease-causing pathogenic microbes with at least 1,500 viruses that has become a World Health Organisation ‘reference laboratory’: a key part in the global biosafety-lab network. It was also allowed to move out of the university campus to an industrial park outside the city. Inevitably, some believe the institute is linked to China’s bioweapons programme.

Part of a policy to cover up dual-use could explain Beijing’s keenness to push the theory of the transmission of SARS and Covid-19 through wet markets, with the virus carried by bats, civet cats and pangolins.

Significantly, the US State Department issued a fact-sheet on January 15 that showed it was convinced the Wuhan institute carried out both civilian and military research, and that staff could therefore be under military discipline. It said: ‘Despite presenting itself as a civilian institution, the US has determined that the Wuhan institute has collaborated on publications and secret projects with China’s military.

‘It has engaged in classified research, including laboratory animal experiments, on behalf of the Chinese military since at least 2017.’

When US embassy official Rick Switzer visited the lab, his memo, dated April 19, 2018, said its research ‘strongly suggests that SARS-like coronaviruses from bats can be transmitted to humans to cause SARS-like disease’.

Crucially, too, the memo observed that the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s brochure highlighted a national security role, saying that it ‘is an effective measure to improve China’s availability in safeguarding national biosafety if [a] possible biological warfare or terrorist attack happens’.

It’s a jarring irony that one of the Wuhan virus researchers’ greatest international allies has been the US government, which, in 2009, created the Emerging Pandemics Threat programme with an annual budget of $500 million.

The programme was particularly keen on bat viruses, the top priority of an organisation called EcoHealth Alliance, based in New York. Originally named Wildlife Preservation Trust International, it had been set up in 1971 by Gerald Durrell, the naturalist and author.

The alliance is run by Dr Peter Daszak, a British scientist who promotes the idea that bats are a particularly significant host for viruses. He has obtained $100 million in US government grants (some from the Pentagon and nearly half donated by the US government’s Emerging Pandemic Threats programme) and earns a salary of just over $400,000.

Dr Daszak’s work, his supporters say, enabled the rapid identification and gene-sequencing of Covid-19 and facilitated the development of vaccines. But he has critics in the scientific community. They argue that virus spill-over from bats is extremely rare and that his research has produced nothing that could prevent a new pandemic or contribute to vaccine development. Furthermore, they say, the gene-splicing research in Wuhan on bat viruses is very dangerous, especially considering China’s poor laboratory safety record.

Dr Daszak has a long history of collaborating with ‘Bat Woman’ Shi Zhengli, and is responsible for funnelling millions of dollars from the Pentagon into a facility that many suspect is a front for the People’s Liberation Army.

The pair’s first known collaboration was in 2004 when he helped fund and facilitate a virus-gathering trip to remote bat caves. EcoHealth Alliance also funded Zhengli’s experiments to create a man-made virus from a horseshoe bat that was able to enter the human respiratory tract.

It is no surprise, then, that her Wuhan Institute of Virology immediately came under suspicion as the source of the Covid-19 virus.

To the Chinese Communist Party it was vital for this theory to be quashed. Zhengli did her best, announcing that she had compared the genetic make-up of Covid-19 to her own bat virus data and found no link. As she told Scientific American: ‘That took a load off my mind. I had not slept a wink for days.’

She also said she had gone ‘frantically through her own lab’s records from the past few years to check for any mishandling of experimental materials, especially during disposal’. Her conclusion? An accident was out of the question, too.

How very convenient.

Later, in February, she muddied this story, saying she had discovered a new and previously unreported bat virus which bore a 96 per cent similarity to Covid-19, including the receptor which is the ‘key’ to allow the virus to enter human cells. It is, she has said, the most likely candidate to be Covid-19’s direct ancestor.

However, the timing of her statement aroused great suspicion among experts around the world. Was the revelation supposed to support the theory that Covid-19 came from an animal rather than being made in a lab?

Another problem is that Beijing’s official story of the virus’s origin kept altering. Over the first half of 2020, it changed from saying the Wuhan wet market was central to the outbreak to the claim that the earliest people to be diagnosed with Covid-19 neither worked in the market nor had been near it.

So the world, consumed as it was by the worst pandemic in human memory, was left with the notion that bats in a remote cave in China’s Yunnan province had infected an unknown person, either directly in some unknown way or through some unknown intermediate mammal. Then, this infected person had gone directly to Wuhan without infecting anyone else on the way but had then infected an unknown person in the central Chinese city who had started an epidemic.

The truth is that Beijing is never likely to accept responsibility for creating a new virus, allowing it to escape and unleashing a global pandemic that has so far killed more than 3.5 million people.

If it did own up, it would be liable for huge reparations. The national shame might spell the end of the Chinese Communist Party’s 70-year rule. It would start a political earthquake which would begin in China and upend the world order.

Part of the opposition to the lab theory rested on antipathy to Donald Trump and his administration’s campaign against China. Given a choice between supporting Trump or the Chinese Communist Party, most scientists openly sided with the Chinese. Now, though, Trump, the first American President in a generation to take a tough line on China, is gone and replaced by one who may return to past policies.

Even though the Chinese Communist Party openly did other shocking things, such as imprisoning Uighurs and democracy activists in Hong Kong, the leading scientific journals never took a stance against China, although the Lancet, Nature and Science magazine published scathing editorials against Trump.

Besides, even if Western leaders did impose their will, China’s ability to frustrate any investigation is limitless. Take, for example, the story about the researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology who might have been the first to catch Covid-19 and die from it. The Chinese government deleted all record of her existence. It said she had left the institute in 2015, even though she was in a 2018 photograph posted on the institute’s website.

Beijing remains busy trying to spread the message that it was not in any way responsible for the origins of Covid-19.

In his 2021 New Year address, China’s President Xi Jinping looked back at 2020 with an air of triumph. He said: ‘Facing the sudden coronavirus pandemic, we put people and their lives first to interpret the great love among humans. With solidarity and resilience, we wrote the epic of our fight against the pandemic. We saw the heroic spirit of marching straight to the front lines, holding posts with tenacity, taking responsibility to get through thick and thin, sacrifices with bravery and touching moments of helping each other.’

China has made a complete return to normality, with a resurgent economy and strong exports. Wuhan was packed with revellers on New Year’s Eve, while the streets of cities such as London were empty.

© Jasper Becker, 2021

R231, you're still posting from Beijing.

US authorities warned that security standards were slipping at the Wuhan lab already in 2018. So it's not "unlikely" that the virus did leak from the lab.

[italic]Two years before the novel coronavirus pandemic upended the world, U.S. Embassy officials visited a Chinese research facility in the city of Wuhan several times and sent two official warnings back to Washington about inadequate safety at the lab, which was conducting risky studies on coronaviruses from bats. [/italic]

R228 is posting from reality.

The problem with that article from Jasper Becker is that it is a mix of true things (lax biosafety standards at mainland Chinese labs, the CCP’s culture of secrecy and an overly cozy relationship between the military and academia) with a few outright lies, but more importantly a lot of misdirected conclusions, purposely imprecise terminology and implied outrage over routine things.

So a few brief clarifications

1) Bats are a viral reservoir. That isn’t something Peter Dazak made up. Surveillance of bat populations happens all over the world and is done by people without ties to Dazak.

2) Countries that have sophisticated military establishments and invest in R&D have classified research going on at Universities. That isn’t specific to China. And guess what, some of that research is about viruses because viruses are a problem during wars, there was a little viral problem in WWI for instance. And countries like North Korea for sure have bio weapon creation programs that we all need to truly defend against. The US has classified research at Universities about viral pathogens as discussed above regarding DTRA. The idea that having such funding implies creation of a bioweapon is misplaced.

3) The author uses the terms Dual Use Research, Dual Use Research of Concern and Gain of Function like someone who doesn’t really know what they mean. (DUR is not always DURC is not always GOF in real life, and and again the jump to the belief that that means bio weapon creation is bizarre)

It’s a very sophisticated article for sure though. I am sure it will hornswaggle many.

Reading a little more about Jasper Becker I am going to amend my post above to cut him some slack in regard to intentions given that the CCP did destroy his career as a journalist. I can see how that would color his thinking in a way that wasn't intentionally malign. Imagine the CCP had ruined your career, you knew nothing about cars and someone told you that Chinese cars had combustion engines and a communist party official served on the board of every company making cars in mainland China. Those are all true facts* that sound VERY ALARMING. Chinese cars must be stealth bombs created by the Chinese military. That's how his article reads, like someone who heard things about their mortal enemy that to a person with no context and a vague grasp of definitions would sound scary and just ran with it. It's an object lesson in challenging our own internal biases.

*It's all true! Most cars have combustion engines and by law all companies in mainland China have to have a communist party official on the board.

[quote]there was a little viral problem in WWI for instance

Which also came from China.

Yes I know there's a book by a historian that claims the Spanish Flu originated in Kansas, but leading virologists dismiss this theory.

What an odd thing to say R241. It’s like a racist version of a yo’ mama joke. Yo Mama so nasty R241 she got the Spanish flu from Sun Yat Sen and spread it through France.

Anyway anyone interested in the various theories of the origins of the 1918 flu here’s a good lay language recap.

‘Damning’ science shows COVID-19 likely engineered in lab: experts

“Damning” science strongly suggests that COVID-19 is a man-made monster, optimized in a lab for maximum infectivity before hitting the outside to catastrophic effect, two experts said Sunday.

Writing in an opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal, Dr. Steven Quay and Richard Muller pointed to two key pieces of evidence to support the claim, which has increasingly gained steam after long being derided as little more than speculation.

The first relates to the nature of gain-of-function research, in which microbiologists tweak a virus’ genome to alter its properties, such as making it more transmissible or more lethal.

Of the 36 possible genome pairings that can produce two arginine amino acids in a row — which results in boosting a virus’ lethality — the one most commonly used in gain-of-function research is CGG-CGG, or double CGG, wrote Quay and Muller.

“The insertion sequence of choice is the double CGG,” wrote Quay, the founder of Atossa Therapeutics, and Muller, a former top scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, who now teaches physics at the University of California’s Berkeley campus.

“That’s because it is readily available and convenient, and scientists have a great deal of experience inserting it,” they wrote. “An additional advantage of the double CGG sequence compared with the other 35 possible choices: It creates a useful beacon that permits the scientists to track the insertion in the laboratory.”

The pair noted that the double CGG sequence has never been found naturally among the entire group of coronaviruses that includes CoV-2, which causes COVID-19.

But, in what Quay and Muller called a “damning fact,” it was found in CoV-2.

“Proponents of zoonotic origin must explain why the novel coronavirus, when it mutated or recombined, happened to pick its least favorite combination, the double CGG,” they wrote. “Why did it replicate the choice the lab’s gain-of-function researchers would have made?

“At the minimum, this fact — that the coronavirus, with all its random possibilities, took the rare and unnatural combination used by human researchers — implies that the leading theory for the origin of the coronavirus must be laboratory escape.”

Recently revealed emails by Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, show that he was warned as early as Jan. 2020 that the virus may have been “engineered.”

In a Senate hearing last month, Fauci admitted that he couldn’t be certain that the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China — the nation from which COVID-19 sprang in late 2019 — didn’t put a pre-pandemic $600,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health toward gain-of-function research.

The stated purpose of the grant was determining whether coronaviruses could be transmitted from bats to humans, a scenario popularly suggested as the origin of COVID-19.

Beyond apparent signs of gain-of-function engineering, Quay and Muller wrote in the Journal that the evidence “most compelling is the dramatic differences in the genetic diversity of CoV-2, compared with the coronaviruses responsible for SARS and MERS.”

SARS and MERS, which were confirmed to be of natural origin, “evolved rapidly as they spread through the human population, until the most contagious forms dominated,” the pair wrote.

By contrast, COVID-19 proved to be highly contagious from the point it was first detected.

“Such early optimization is unprecedented, and it suggests a long period of adaptation that predated its public spread,” wrote Quay and Muller. “Science knows of only one way that could be achieved: simulated natural evolution, growing the virus on human cells until the optimum is achieved. That is precisely what is done in gain-of-function research.”

The two pieces of evidence led Quay and Muller to conclude that the possibility that COVID-19 was engineered should be viewed as the leading theory.

“The presence of the double CGG sequence is strong evidence of gene splicing, and the absence of diversity in the public outbreak suggests gain-of-function acceleration,” they wrote. “The scientific evidence points to the conclusion that the virus was developed in a laboratory.”

[quote] No one ever said the lab leak possibillty was impossible.

That is exactly what they said. Practically. You sound like you have totally bought party line, R228, and now you're parroting it. They said that only lunatics and conspiracy theorists and, even worse, Trumpers considered the lab leak hypothesis in any way plausible.

Those respected experts and scientists who said it was a plausible hypothesis early in 2020 were shut down and ridiculed and accused of being crazy right wingers. And that campaign was deliberately orchestrated to prevent investigating the lab leak hypothesis.

Just stop trying to rewrote the history of this controversy. As time went on there was more evidence that pointed to the lab leak origin than natural origin.

You're wrong on a number of points but quite frankly I doubt you're interested in anything expect defending the castle.

They always knew what the WIV was studying. It is not some new piece of evidence to be considered.

R245, show me the quotes of all the reputable scientists saying it was impossible. I notice you conveniently forgot that part.

R243/R244, again, all complete conjecture. I know the big words impress all the non-scientists like shiny objects but big words do not mean truth. Do you know what the double CGG could also mean? That the reason this particular virus more easily make the jump from an animal to humans was because it had developed the CGG variation. Correlation vs. causation with, as yet, no knowledge of the actual origins. As you will notice, there are no scientists that say this is 100% fact. Not one that is any kind of actual scientist. We do not know what happened yet. The fact that this is being hyped now by people like Scalise and the other Repugs is because they needed to coalesce around a talking point with their media owners. Biden is doing way too well.

Drawing conclusions before investigation is not how science works and any scientist who does that has an agenda. They also don't make their points in the New York Post.

"ONE thing that is certain about the coronavirus pandemic is that the Chinese government has consistently told lies about the origin, spread and effect of the virus."

THIS is what the world needs to take away from this discussion. Given the obsessive secrecy and obfuscation that characterizes the CCP, and knowing their draconian response to any information they view as an accusation, domestic or international, there is no reason to believe ANYTHING they say. I wouldn't believe them if they said the world was round unless I had a second, trustworthy source to confim it.

Given that Daszak has evidently sold himself and his reputation wholesale to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, it should surprise no one that he not only hindered the WHO investigation and used it to cover up any damaging evidence, but also spearheaded the campaign to suppress discussion of the real source of the outbreak. The only surprising thing is that the scientific establishment was craven enough to let him do so.

With so many sources of smoke around the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the COVID fire almost certainly started there.

NPR April 23, 2020:

"Virus researchers say there is virtually no chance that the new coronavirus was released as result of a laboratory accident in China or anywhere else."

Virtually no chance

Reporters who participated in the coverup should be held accountable.

“Even if researchers stumbled across the virus, they would be very unlikely to get infected. When researchers collect samples, they take extraordinary precautions to avoid infecting themselves in the field, says Mazet. Scientists working with wild bats wear N95 respirator masks, Tyvek suits, goggles and gloves. Samples of bat blood, urine, saliva and feces are immediately plunged into nitrogen to freeze them on the spot, Mazet says.”

The truth has come out that this statement was a total lie. The Chinese scientists who found the virus in the cave did become infected and they died. Basically everything that was published to try to get the public to believe the wet market story and not the lab leak was a lie.

The Chinese government is secretive because it is entirely a criminal organization which KNOWS that the Chinese people need very little provocation to rise up en masse against it (once again). The US and the West in general have done almost nothing hinder China's rulers in this regard, all because of $$$.

R245 is spot on.

I'm sure ElderLez has attended every Bernie Sanders rally in her state and beyond and loves every socialist dictatorship on the planet.

R254, you just keep proving us right over and over and over.

China’s COVID cover-up going on to this day, WHO adviser claims

The Chinese government is carrying out a “massive cover-up” of the true origins of the coronavirus and is the biggest obstacle to getting to the bottom of the pandemic, a World Health Organization (WHO) advisory board member said Monday.

“The problem that we face here isn’t the WHO. It’s not even really Dr. [Anthony] Fauci,” Jaime Metzl told Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom”. “The problem is the Chinese have engaged in a massive cover-up that is going on until today involving destroying samples, hiding records, placing a universal gag order on Chinese scientists and imprisoning Chinese citizen journalists asking the most basic questions. That’s what we need to get around.”

Metzl is a proponent of the theory that the virus accidentally leaked from a virology lab in the city of Wuhan, as opposed to naturally transmitting from animals to humans.

The so-called “lab leak” theory has gained credence in recent weeks following a series of revelations, including a Wall Street Journal report that three researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were hospitalized with an unknown illness in November 2019, before the coronavirus outbreak was acknowledged by Beijing.

In addition, the release of thousands of pages of emails to and from Fauci last week revealed that the now-White House chief medical adviser was informed in January 2020 that the virus could have been “engineered” and displayed traits that were “inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory.”

Last month, President Biden ordered the intelligence community to review all the evidence related to the origins of the virus and report back within 90 days.

Despite the growing circumstantial evidence of a lab leak, Metzl said Monday that the theory could not be presumed true without a full investigation.

“We need to do everything possible to have a full investigation,” he said. “If China will allow it, that’s great. If they won’t allow it, we need to have a parallel process with the United States working with allies and partners around the world.”

Metzl added that “the more China stonewalls, the more suspicious that it looks … China may not want to investigate the origins of this pandemic, or maybe they already know how it started, but we can’t give China a veto over whether or not we investigate the worst pandemic in a century.”

"China may not want to investigate the origins of this pandemic, or maybe they already know how it started, but we can’t give China a veto over whether or not we investigate the worst pandemic in a century.”

Amen, Dr. Metzl.

R256, why are the only sites you can link to or post about the NY Post and Fox News?

Again, possibility does not equal probability and the probabilities of each scenario aren't even known yet. You either follow science or you don't. The facts as they stand right now are that this is really, really being hyped by right wing politicians and media. They all got their talking points, as usual. The scientific world is working on it. If you are going to buy all in when it comes to the right wing talking points, then you're no better than the idiot Covid deniers who also didn't follow the science.

It's very plausible that the virus leaked from a lab, most probably a bat virus that had been collected in a cave mine in another region of China in 2012. This is why Fauci asked China to release the medical records of the 3 miners that had fallen ill after entering the cave. Samples were taken to the Wuhan lab and it also appears that experiments had been done on the virus to strengthen it.

Fauci calls on China to release records of Wuhan lab workers

China denies that scientists who reportedly became ill in November 2019 ever had Covid-19

Fri, Jun 4, 2021, 08:42 Updated: Fri, Jun 4, 2021, 08:50

Kiran Stacey and Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington

Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser has called on China to release the medical records of nine people whose illnesses might provide vital clues into whether Covid-19 first emerged as the result of a lab leak.

Dr Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, or NIAID, told the Financial Times that the records could help resolve the debate over the origins of a disease that has killed more than 3.5 million people worldwide.

The records in question concern three researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology who reportedly became sick in November 2019, and six miners who fell ill after entering a bat cave in 2012. Scientists from the Wuhan Institute of Virology subsequently visited the cave to take samples from the bats. Three of the miners died.

Shi Zhengli, the institute’s leading expert on coronaviruses, has previously denied there were any infections at the lab – a claim Dr Fauci did not dispute, but said should be investigated further.

“I would like to see the medical records of the three people who are reported to have got sick in 2019,” Dr Fauci said. “Did they really get sick, and if so, what did they get sick with?

“The same with the miners who got ill years ago ... What do the medical records of those people say? Was there [a] virus in those people? What was it? It is entirely conceivable that the origins of Sars-Cov-2 was in that cave and either started spreading naturally or went through the lab.”

The state department did not immediately respond to a question about whether the Biden administration had asked China for the medical records.

Lab leak theory China’s foreign ministry declined to say whether it would consider releasing the medical records of the nine individuals at a press briefing on Friday. But Wang Wenbin, a spokesman, repeated a statement made by the institute in March that none of its staff had ever been infected with Covid-19.

The origins of Covid-19 have become one of the most contentious questions of the pandemic. Former US president Donald Trump said last year he thought the coronavirus had leaked from the Wuhan lab, but he was widely dismissed by most of the scientific community, who argued it was far more likely to have naturally jumped from animals to humans.

However, the lab leak theory has gained traction in recent weeks after a group of prominent scientists signed a letter arguing it should be taken seriously. There has also been a renewed focus on the Wuhan researchers who were sent to hospital weeks before the first case of Covid-19 was officially recorded.

Mr Biden last week ordered US intelligence services to come to a conclusion within 90 days about what started the pandemic. The White House said two branches of the intelligence community believe the Sars-Cov-2 virus was transmitted naturally, but a third believes it came from the Wuhan Institute. None of the branches have a high level of confidence in their conclusion.

Dr Fauci has been accused, especially by conservatives, of playing down the lab leak theory, in part to protect the reputation of NIAID, which helped to fund controversial bat research at Wuhan.

David Asher, former head of the state department’s Covid-19 origins investigation, questioned why Dr Fauci was only seeking the medical records now. He pointed out that the Trump administration said publicly in January that US intelligence believed the Wuhan scientists had fallen sick with symptoms of the virus.

“I’m stunned that Fauci would now ask this question,” said Mr Asher, who is now at the Hudson Institute, a conservative Washington-based think-tank.

The potential dangers of lab leaks, especially when experimenting with viruses in the lab, were being flagged years ago. Western labs have been doing these kinds of things too, although most likely with better safety standards. I suspect one reason some virologists are pushing back so adamantly against the lab leak theory is because they're doing some things in their labs that they'd prefer not to have greater scrutiny over.

Article from 2014 entitled "Virus experiments risk unleashing global pandemic, study warns: Benefits of scientific testing in the area are outweighed by risks of pathogenic strains spreading round world, say researchers"

From the 2014 Guardian article.

[quote]Public health experts have warned that controversial experiments on mutant viruses could put human lives in danger by unleashing an accidental pandemic.

[quote]Several groups of scientists around the world are creating and altering viruses to understand how natural strains might evolve into more lethal forms that spread easily among humans.

[quote]But in a report published on Tuesday, researchers at Harvard and Yale universities in the US argue that the benefits of the work are outweighed by the risk of pathogenic strains escaping from laboratories and spreading around the world.

[quote]They calculate that if 10 high-containment labs in the US performed such experiments for 10 years, the chance of at least one person becoming infected was nearly 20%. If an infected person left the laboratory, the virus might then spread more widely.

[quote]"We are not saying this is going to happen, but when the potential is a pandemic, even a small chance is something you have to weigh very heavily," said Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist at Harvard School of Public Health, who wrote the report with Alison Galvani, an epidemiologist at Yale.

[quote]The report threatens to reignite a crisis in science that erupted in 2012 when a US biosecurity panel ruled that two separate studies on mutant bird flu were too dangerous to publish. They described the creation of new mutant strains that spread among ferrets – a proxy for humans – held in neighbouring cages. One fear was that the recipe for the pathogens might fall into the hands of bioterrorists.

NY Post is free, not behind the paywall like many sites. They are reporting on WHO, not right winged shit.

It's all here, from 2014 and earlier.

Q: When experts think about the release of PPPs [potential pandemic pathogens], they often focus on malevolent actors in the lab, such as the biologist who allegedly manufactured and distributed highly refined anthrax spores in the fall of 2001. But you’re more worried about an accident in the laboratory, especially in light of reports earlier this year of mishaps at a federal lab with anthrax bacteria. Does that seem a more likely scenario?

A: It’s the one that I can quantify. We don’t know how bad the bad guys are, how many of them there are, and how that will change over time. What we do know is that there is a 20 percent risk that at least one laboratory worker will get infected over 100 laboratory years of work in a Biosafety Level 3 lab, which has special safety features for handling lethal agents.

If one worker gets infected, that doesn’t mean the world is at risk. The pathogen would have to become widespread, and the only published estimate for that occurrence is in the 10 to 20 percent range. I would expand that range to 5 to 60 percent, because it depends on things that are hard to predict: how long a person is infectious, how many contacts they have, whether their infectiousness is reduced by antivirals.

Q: Describe a nightmare scenario of an experiment with a deadly flu virus gone awry.

A: [bold]The worst outcome would be if a laboratory worker got infected and it turned out that the virus was human-to-human transmissible and retained some level of virulence in humans. It wouldn’t have to kill 60 percent of victims, like the parent strain of the H5N1 bird flu. It would be bad enough if the virus killed 2 percent of victims, as did the 1918 flu. That epidemic killed 50 to 100 million people worldwide.[/bold]

[quote] why are the only sites you can link to or post about the NY Post and Fox News?

R258 Explain to us exactly what falsehood that NYPost article is promoting.

The article simply quotes Jaime Metzl a World Health Organization advisory board member.

Metzle served the Clinton Administration, " as Director for Multilateral and Humanitarian Affairs for the National Security Council, working for the Clinton Administration in the United States Department of State as Senior Advisor to the Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy & Public Affairs and Information Technology and Senior Coordinator for International Public Information, and was also Deputy Staff Director of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee under then Senator Joe Biden."

So tell us, why do you want that NYPost article censored?

R264 If you want to wade through the early SARS-CoV-2 threads from February 2020 we actually had pretty extensive discussions on the US GOF pause and possible unintended consequences.

People have been predicting that something like this would happen, for decades. It seems highly likely that this is exactly what did occur. China will completely stonewall about the whole thing, their government is so insecure that it can't possibly tolerate any kind of investigation like this, internally or from the outside. The people in China who are familiar with the early circumstances have already "disappeared". There is not going to be ANY evidence to collect about this.

It's a shame so many DLers FFed this thread to the point it's greyed out. Seems if you remotely entertain the notion of a possible lab leak, that makes you a homophobic Trumpanzee.

Wrongthink on any issue is proof of heresy.

How come it doesn’t show up as greyed out for me?

R268, go to your Settings at the top of the site. Click it. Change your setting to Asbestos Eyes on the scale. The graying out will disappear.

Agree, R268, it's disturbing.

J-Mac, the point isn't how to adjust settings. The point is that this thread has been FFed so many times that it demonstrates how most DLers are averse to this news. Because unfortunately, to even consider the possibility of a lab leak is to agree with Trump's early suspicions. I hate Trump too, and it pains me to think he may have been right.

But "new shit has come to light."

Fauci, you in danger gurl!

R273, that is disturbing and I agree with you. It's as if people are no longer capable of independent thinking. It's all mob mentality. I'm never sure if the WW votes cancel out the FF votes.

But the OP was grayed out for me as well and I realized that I had to re-sign in the other night and that must have put my settings back to the original setting - when I changed it back to Asbestos Eyes OP was no longer grayed out.

It is the China virus, it came from China. Just like the Indian variant is going around. China is bad but all Chinese people are. It takes the wisdom to know the difference. If NPR is digging in, than you know that shit was leaked from a lab. In NPR fashion, it was most likely by a WHITE technician who just happened to be working their that day and a WOC fighting the good fight who happened to discover it.

I read something upthread that gay men still can't donate blood, which I know is true. Is it really true than trans women can donate? She seems a bit unfair and homophobic.

[quote]The FDA revised guidance states, “In the context of the donor history questionnaire, FDA recommends that male or female gender be taken to be self-identified and self-reported.”

So if you say you are female you are female and the rules for "MSM"s don't apply.

So, basically, R276, they are saying as long as the gay guy sticking his dick in the other gay guy's ass is wearing a dress, he can donate but once the dress isn't involved the gay guy just turns into a diseased pariah. And some gay people argue that trans isn't erasing gays? First they came for the women/lesbians and we did nothing, then they came for us...

Reality...men are male, women are female. End of fucking story. Grab your crotch and figure it out.

The issue of blood is dangerous. We've discussed this here before. I'm not commenting on whether gay men can donate or not because I don't know the medical rationale behind any such decision and if that rational is still valid today.

However, the labeling of male and female blood by biology is vital. Some men react adversely to receiving blood from women who have been pregnant. Women don't always know if they have been pregnant - many women at some point in their lives have early miscarriages before they even realize they're pregnant. It would just seem like a heavy period, if that, to most women. The adverse reactions to male recipients are very serious and could be fatal.

Mislabeling causes more actual harm than misgendering.

Reality sucks.

The Red Cross needs to be picketed. The American RC has always been money whores and I have long refused to support it. They are probably afraid they'll lose money if they stand their ground and insist that donors provide their biological sex.

The Red Cross is just following federal guidelines that were agreed upon by Fauci's FDA. Red Cross' stance in the link at R276 is that sexual orientation should not be used to determine eligibility for blood donation and they are working towards that goal.

[Quote]The Red Cross is just following federal guidelines that were agreed upon by Fauci's FDA.

Sorry this is inaccurate. Fauci was involved in the guidelines that were mandated by the FDA, but I realize he is with the NIH and was working on HIV/AIDS policy in that capacity.

Why don't they just make the regulations based on behavior? Any high risk activity and you can't donate. I'd rather get blood from some old celibate queen than some 22 year old whore who just got dp'd by her drug dealer and his friend or some housewife who just got ass fucked by her cheating whore of a husband.

Technically the MSM guidelines are behavior based. They relaxed the rules for COVID, you see. So men who have not had sex with a man for the last 3 months are allowed to donate.

But why is it only men who have sex with men? All ass fucking is more likely to spread disease and plenty of straights are ass fucking.

Ask Fauci

They should let gay men who practice safe sex donate but ban PrEP users and other whores.

[quote] Why don't they just make the regulations based on behavior? Any high risk activity and you can't donate.

I sure as hell don't have the answers but we are asking people to be honest. How the hell in this day and age do you rely on someone's honesty? I wouldn't. Not in matters of health.

Is there some way they test the blood afterward? What would they be testing for?

Trannies of color over gay men can give blood? Something is not right with this picture.

Not to distract from the blood donation discussion above, but for anyone who *might* be interested but doesn't want to read thousands of posts from 16 months ago, the US pause on GOF studies coincided with a period a very intense recruitment by mainland China's Thousand Talent plan. Active projects were shut down, which could *possibly* have led to post-docs and junior investigators seeking alternate employment astheir funding suddenly ended. Since the pause was US federal funding only, if a person really wanted to continue doing GOF work it would have made sense to sign up with Thousand Talents since there are lots of money and no GOF restrictions in China. I am assuming that the investigation will look at if there were any recruits from the US funded GOF performing labs to WIV. If I were doing the investigation I'd also be looking to make contact with/interview WIV researchers without family in mainland China. (Bonus points if they are from northern Italy) One of the ways the CCP ensures silence is by threatening the families of whistleblowers so no family there, less leverage.

If I were a conspiracy theorist I'd think the blame Fauci/they were building a bioweapon nonsense was probably put out by the CCP themselves to muddy the waters and create division in the US.

Meant to link to this

R288, thank you for the excellent edification. More to look into now.

What would the division be in the US???

Even most Asians hate the CCP.

A fascinating, compelling, and damning new piece in the NYTIMES from today, re the likely backstory of the Covid-19 virus. Article is too long for these posts, and I can't figure out how to cut it to suit Muriel's stringent standards. So if the paywall locks you out, you can look up the title of it in Google, and try a cached version there, which is usually free and easily accesible. The piece is def worth reading.

^From the middle of that article:

[...]

Shortly after Wuhan was locked down in January 2020, it became apparent that SARS-CoV-2 was related to a virus that scientists had been aware of for years.

On Feb. 3, 2020, Dr. Shi and co-authors announced in Nature that they had found a virus in their database, RaTG13, whose genome sequence was 96.2 percent identical to SARS-CoV-2 and was previously detected in horseshoe bats of Yunnan.

Suspicious internet sleuths combed through genomic databases and found that RaTG13 was an exact match for a bat coronavirus called 4991 retrieved from a cave implicated in an unexplained outbreak of pneumonia in 2012 among miners who collected bat guano from a mine in Yunnan. Three of the six miners died. [..]

That's a great article R292. Thanks for posting.

Didn't most people think it came from the lab, at least deep down even if you didn't voice it. Elderlez, what were your gut thoughts of origin?

What I think posted back in February 2020 was that I was thinking 55% regular zoonotic origin, 45% lab leak. I always thought it was possible, but less likely. If the information about the three sick workers in the fall of 2019 is true, that changes the math in my mind. That said I don't think most people really understand all the different permutations of "lab leak." There's been a lot of talk about lab workers selling lab animals to food markets. Maybe the labs were buying animals from the food market vendors coming in from the country. That seems far more likely than any bioweapon nonsense. The leak could have been pre-lab in that case and the wet market cover story would be a kinda true cover story. Also I don't think most people fully grasp that WIV might be so secretive not because of a lab leak, but because of other things they were doing that would appear unethical to the rest of the world; stolen IP, unconsented challenge studies, etc. And I really think that the focus on Dazak as the source of funding for GOF in China (as if they need the money!) distracts from the possibility that he might be acting as he is based on blackmail. (The CCP sends someone to audiotape you saying embarrassing things over drinks when in China.)

R296, I think most people who are open to the lab leak theory don't believe that it was a deliberately engineered bioweapon.

I've heard defenders of the zoonotic theory argue that the Wuhan Institute and the Chinese authorities are secretive not because they have anything to hide but simply because that's just how things are in China. That alone sounds to me like the perfect conditions for a lab leak to occur, in the various permutations you describe.

The Times article I posted just up above tabulates the MANY times that pathogens have escaped from these labs, not only in China but elsewhere, including the US. The point of the article is that China was researching the viruses in order to "head them off at the pass," in doing gain of function experiments. There were also likely elements in the Chinese govt and military who would have been keeping tabs on these things as potential bio-weapons, even though nations have agreed not to engage in this kind of warfare (the US is certainly keeping an eye on this kind of thing, itself, we can be certain). I believe, as the author strong seems to support, that carelessness allowed this disease to escape from that lab (where it might well have been tampered with, genetically), likely via infection of an employee, and it spread from there, likely a few months before it was being detected in China in Dec. of 2019. The Chinese utter refusal to allow meaningful investigation of *any* of the evidence, along with the "disappearance" of all of those who were warning about this in the early stages of the pandemic, indicates to me, perfectly clearly, that they themselves KNOW this is what happened. -R293

Here's an alternative link to the NYT article.

Why doesn't the world ever hold China accountable for anything? Every damn disease starts in China. They need to be pressured to clean up their society concerning everything from basic hygiene to human rights because at the rate they are going now, they're going to end the fucking world and deny it right until the end.

Bill Maher makes his thoughts known.

[quote] “YouTube should not be telling me what I can see about ivermectin,” Maher said. “Ivermectin isn’t a registered Republican. It’s a drug! I don’t know if it works or not, and a lot of other doctors don’t either.”

It's fascinating to me that at the outset of the pandemic, Democrats were anti drug and then after the vaccine after Biden became president, the two parties switched sides.

I'm sure a lot more will come out the further we away get from this. I think on one hand I am trying to forget about 2020, but I'm still blown away when I think about everything that happened. It's wild. May this be the worst thing that we all collectively encounter for the next 50 years. I feel like anything completely out there can happen now.

R303, unfortunately, scientists think we are entering the age of pandemics. There are too many people going into too many remote places eating and interacting with too many exotic animals while the planet is burning from the environmental damage we've inflicted upon it releasing pathogens that have been frozen away for millions of years. This pandemic was a kindergarten level practice run that humanity, especially the lowest level scum of humanity known as Republicans, failed spectacularly.

R304 It's mind blowing that someone could read this entire thread and still be so arrogant while assuming that it was just Republicans who failed spectacularly.

^If there is one good thing about the lab leak theory, it's proving that this sort of thing is preventable.

Fuck you, R305, you fucking Repug apologist. They politicized a fucking virus and have never stopped lying. The blood of nearly 700,000 Americans is on their hands.

^AMEN

[quote] May this be the worst thing that we all collectively encounter for the next 50 years. I feel like anything completely out there can happen now.

Wait until the zombies or aliens show up.

I want to see the inclusion arguments then. LOL!

Zombies in the spa.

China will never admit to anything.

IIRC World War Z began in China. See. Toldya!

It is madness to run a hot lab in a city with millions of people. And that goes for the US too. Atlanta is no longer a rural backwater. Move the CDC to fucking Alaska!

You'll all be sorry when Ebola breaks out, and it will.

Americans are so stupid about risk. I guarantee you there are several employees of the CDC right no who'd like nothing better than to spread Lassa fever spores at a football galme.

Smart people know. C'mon.

Prophetic words, from last year:

A more direct link