Coronavirus Outbreak

[Grace]

Well..Well...The untruthful propaganda prone main stream media more than likely was wrong again. (Like they have been so many times in the past).

A year after left-wing news TRASHED theory that COVID originated from a Wuhan lab when Trump supported the suggestion - outlets now throw their SUPPORT behind the idea.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... -idea.html

[Josh]

Well..Well...The untruthful propaganda prone main stream media more than likely was wrong again. (Like they have been so many times in the past).

A year after left-wing news TRASHED theory that COVID originated from a Wuhan lab when Trump supported the suggestion - outlets now throw their SUPPORT behind the idea.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... -idea.html

Even Dr Fauci now is saying it.

[Szdfan]

An ophthalmologist, Paul said unless he sees evidence proving that the vaccine is more effective than having survived the virus, he won’t be getting the shot.

An ophthalmologist is an eye doctor. lol.

Well then, it makes sense that he want to see evidence. Maybe he’s trying to generate business, if you can’t see evidence, maybe he can help with your eyes.

As a Master of Divinity, I say that it seems odd that people will put more stock into ophthalmologists, ER doctors, chiropractors and random dudes on YouTube than actual epidemiologists.

[Josh]

An ophthalmologist is an eye doctor. lol.

Well then, it makes sense that he want to see evidence. Maybe he’s trying to generate business, if you can’t see evidence, maybe he can help with your eyes.

As a Master of Divinity, I say that it seems odd that people will put more stock into ophthalmologists, ER doctors, chiropractors and random dudes on YouTube than actual epidemiologists.

When these people are chronically wrong, they don’t build trust.

For example, Dr Fauci’s job was to manage the AIDS epidemic. He did a terrible job.

[Robert]

As a Master of Divinity, I say that it seems odd that people will put more stock into ophthalmologists, ER doctors, chiropractors and random dudes on YouTube than actual epidemiologists.

I can not speak for others, but I have posted multiple Epidemiologists and virologists that were not saying what the main stream media was about the Covid mess.

Instead of attacking the speaker, Rand Paul, why not speak to what he presented. Would that not be a better way to learn and discuss?

Here is the committees he sits on:



He has challenged Dr. Fauci multiple times who answers to one of these committees. Many of the things he has challenged Dr. Fauci about showed to be justified over time.

He is one of the few Senators that I have an ounce of trust in. I said ounce. Please do not distort that statement.

[Josh]

One of the challenges with COVID-19 is the mainstream narrative is "trust the experts" - except when the experts don't agree with the mainstream narrative.

For example, in Scientific American last month,

Even Nobel laurates in medicine have been culpable; Luc Montagnier’s statement that COVID was likely manufactured earned him both the enthusiastic embrace of conspiracy theorists and the enmity of scientific peers who refuted the conjecture as utterly false.

Luc Montagnier is definitely an expert in the field of viruses, and specifically a particular type of RNA virus.

And the narrative has changed since April! Now it is no longer "fringe" to consider that COVID may have had non-natural origins, with even Dr Fauci saying that's a possibility.

At issue here is not scientific consensus, believing in science, or not believing in science. It is being told to uncritically believe whatever a certain narrative is, which is decided by an unaccountable group of people, under the threat of ostracism if you don't rapidly change what you believe to go with this new "consensus". The actual truth (and science) get lost in the process.

The ultimate victim will be science itself. We have a future to look forward to of lots of conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, quack cures, and regression against the gains made in the 20th century on the forefront of medicine.

[Ken]

I never got the impression that the mainstream media "trashed" the idea that the virus could have originated in a lab. Just that they reported there was a lot of unknowns and uncertainty about it. For example:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00502-4
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03165-9
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/30/worl ... china.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/13/scie ... tists.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/06/worl ... hoods.html

Here is a typical bit of "mainstream" media coverage from the NYT from the above article. I don't see any "trashing" of any theories

A group of 18 scientists stated Thursday in a letter published in the journal Science that there is not enough evidence to decide whether a natural origin or an accidental laboratory leak caused the Covid-19 pandemic.

They argued, as the U.S. government and other countries have, for a new investigation to explore where the virus came from.

The organizers of the letter, Jesse Bloom, who studies the evolution of viruses at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, and David Relman, a microbiologist at Stanford University, said they strove to articulate a wait-and-see viewpoint that they believe is shared by many scientists. Many of the signers have not spoken out before.

“Most of the discussion you hear about SARS-CoV-2 origins at this point is coming from, I think, the relatively small number of people who feel very certain about their views,” Dr. Bloom said.

He added: “Anybody who’s making statements with a high level of certainty about this is just outstripping what’s possible to do with the available evidence.”

The new letter stated: “Theories of accidental release from a lab and zoonotic spillover both remain viable.”

Proponents of the idea that the virus may have leaked from a lab, especially the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China where SARS viruses were studied, have been active this year since a World Health Organization team issued a report claiming that such a leak was extremely unlikely, even though the mission never investigated any Chinese labs. The team did visit the Wuhan lab, but did not investigate it. A lab investigation was never part of their mandate. The report, produced in a mission with Chinese scientists, drew extensive criticism from the U.S. government and others that the Chinese government had not cooperated fully and had limited the international scientists’ access to information.

[temporal1]

Josh:
.. The ultimate victim will be science itself. ..

Science is 1 major victim, replaced with SCIENTISM.

Scientism has been chosen for partisan politics - on a grand scale. Not just regarding this pandemic.
Public health and safety are sacrificed for partisan politics - on a grand scale. Not just regarding this pandemic.

Bedford: ‘Do our elected officials care about public safety? Or is it all a lie? Seems like it’s a lie.’

BizPac Review - Home | Facebook
... Violent Criminals Go Unmolested, And While Insane People Defecate And Threaten And Use Drugs In The Streets.
Do Our Elected Officials Care About Public Safety? Disease?

Or Is It All A Lie? Seems Like It's A Lie." ...

The world witnessed a magnificent display of sacrificing literally everything for nothing more than the end goal of unseating a pretty good president, to guarantee he would not have 4 years in office - 4 years that any other career politician president would have comfortably been elected to serve.

This is on public display for any dolt to witness. It’s not hidden, it’s not complicated.
It may be a matter of refusing to be fooled, rather than begging accomodating false gods to be fooled.

Brian Kilmeade Claims Fauci Knew ‘The Whole Time’ Covid Lab Leak Theory Was True: ‘Can’t Duck This Anymore’
https://www.mediaite.com/tv/brian-kilme ... s-anymore/

[Ken]

One of the challenges with COVID-19 is the mainstream narrative is "trust the experts" - except when the experts don't agree with the mainstream narrative.

For example, in Scientific American last month,

Even Nobel laurates in medicine have been culpable; Luc Montagnier’s statement that COVID was likely manufactured earned him both the enthusiastic embrace of conspiracy theorists and the enmity of scientific peers who refuted the conjecture as utterly false.

Luc Montagnier is definitely an expert in the field of viruses, and specifically a particular type of RNA virus.

And the narrative has changed since April! Now it is no longer "fringe" to consider that COVID may have had non-natural origins, with even Dr Fauci saying that's a possibility.

At issue here is not scientific consensus, believing in science, or not believing in science. It is being told to uncritically believe whatever a certain narrative is, which is decided by an unaccountable group of people, under the threat of ostracism if you don't rapidly change what you believe to go with this new "consensus". The actual truth (and science) get lost in the process.

The ultimate victim will be science itself. We have a future to look forward to of lots of conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, quack cures, and regression against the gains made in the 20th century on the forefront of medicine.

Luc Montagnier has been a crank and peddling fringe ideas for over a decade. Such as the idea that DNA emits electromagnetic waves. This is from 11 years ago: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/330/6012/1732

The idea that Covid escaped from a lab in Wuhan is not the same as the idea that it is a manufactured artificial virus as Montagnier claims.

[Ken]

Today's Washington Post did a complete review of coverage over the origin of the virus for the past year and a half:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... -credible/

Early speculation

Dec. 30, 2019: The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission issues an “urgent notice” to medical institutions in Wuhan, saying that cases of pneumonia of unknown cause have emerged from the city’s Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market.

Jan. 5, 2020: Earliest known tweet suggesting China created the virus. @GarboHK tweeted: “18 years ago, #China killed nearly 300 #HongKongers by unreporting #SARS cases, letting Chinese tourists travel around the world, to Asia specifically to spread the virus with bad intention. Today the evil regime strikes again with a new virus.”

Jan. 23: A Daily Mail article appears, headlined: “China built a lab to study SARS and Ebola in Wuhan — and U.S. biosafety experts warned in 2017 that a virus could ‘escape’ the facility that’s become key in fighting the outbreak.”

Jan. 26: The Washington Times publishes an article with the headline: “Coronavirus may have originated in lab linked to China’s biowarfare program.” An editor’s note is added March 25: “Since this story ran, scientists outside of China have had a chance to study the SARS-CoV-2 virus. They concluded it does not show signs of having been manufactured or purposefully manipulated in a lab.”

Jan. 26: A study by Chinese researchers published in the Lancet of the first 41 hospitalized patients in Wuhan who had confirmed infections found that 13 of the 41 cases, including the first documented case, had no link to the seafood marketplace that originally was considered the origin of the outbreak.

Jan 30: Sen. Tom Cotton, speaking at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, says: “This coronavirus is a catastrophe on the scale of Chernobyl for China. But actually, it’s probably worse than Chernobyl, which was localized in its effect. The coronavirus could result in a global pandemic.” He adds: “I would note that Wuhan has China’s only biosafety level-four super laboratory that works with the world’s most deadly pathogens to include, yes, coronavirus.”

Feb. 3: WIV researchers report in the journal Nature that the novel coronavirus spreading around the world was a bat-derived coronavirus. The report said SARS-CoV-2 is 96.2 percent identical at the whole-genome level to a bat coronavirus named RaTG13.

Feb. 6: Botao Xiao, a molecular biomechanics researcher at South China University of Technology, posts a paper stating that “the killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan.” He pointed to the previous safety mishaps and the kind of research undertaken at the lab. He withdrew the paper a few weeks later after Chinese authorities insisted no accident had taken place.

Feb. 9: In response to criticism from China’s ambassador that Cotton’s remarks are “absolutely crazy,” the senator tweets: “Here’s what’s not a conspiracy, not a theory: Fact: China lied about virus starting in Wuhan food market. Fact: super-lab is just a few miles from that market. Where did it start? We don’t know. But burden of proof is on you & fellow communists. Open up now to competent international scientists.”

Feb. 16: Cotton, in response to a Washington Post article critical of him, offers four scenarios on Twitter: “1. Natural (still the most likely, but almost certainly not from the Wuhan food market) 2. Good science, bad safety (e.g., they were researching things like diagnostic testing and vaccines, but an accidental breach occurred). 3. Bad science, bad safety (this is the engineered-bioweapon hypothesis, with an accidental breach). 4. Deliberate release (very unlikely, but shouldn’t rule out till the evidence is in). Again, none of these are ‘theories’ and certainly not ‘conspiracy theories.’ They are hypotheses that ought to be studied in light of the evidence.”

Scientists respond

Feb. 19: A statement is published in Lancet by a group of 27 scientists: “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that covid-19 does not have a natural origin,” the statement says. Scientists “overwhelmingly conclude that this coronavirus originated in wildlife.” The statement was drafted and organized by Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, which funded research at WIV with U.S. government grants. (Three of the signers have since said a laboratory accident is plausible enough to merit consideration.)

March 11: Scientific American publishes a profile of virologist Shi Zhengli, who heads a group that studies bat coronaviruses at WIV. “I had never expected this kind of thing to happen in Wuhan, in central China,” she said. If coronaviruses were the culprit, she remembers thinking, “Could they have come from our lab?” The article said that after the virus emerged, Shi frantically went through her own lab’s records from the past few years to check for any mishandling of experimental materials, but she “breathed a sigh of relief when the results came back: none of the sequences matched those of the viruses her team had sampled from bat caves.” She told the magazine: “That really took a load off my mind. I had not slept a wink for days.”

March 17: An analysis published in Nature Medicine by an influential group of scientists states: “Although the evidence shows that SARSCoV-2 is not a purposefully manipulated virus, it is currently impossible to prove or disprove the other theories of its origin described here. However, since we observed all notable SARS-CoV-2 features, including the optimized RBD [receptor- binding domain] and polybasic cleavage site, in related coronaviruses in nature, we do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible.”

The intelligence community weighs in

March 27: A Defense Intelligence Agency assessment on the origin of the coronavirus is updated to include the possibility that the new coronavirus emerged “accidentally” due to “unsafe laboratory practices.”

April 2: David Ignatius, writing in The Washington Post, notes: “The prime suspect is ‘natural’ transmission from bats to humans, perhaps through unsanitary markets. But scientists don’t rule out that an accident at a research laboratory in Wuhan might have spread a deadly bat virus that had been collected for scientific study.”

April 14: Josh Rogin, writing in The Post, reveals that in 2018, State Department officials visited the WIV and “sent two official warnings back to Washington about inadequate safety at the lab, which was conducting risky studies on coronaviruses from bats. The cables have fueled discussions inside the U.S. government about whether this or another Wuhan lab was the source of the virus — even though conclusive proof has yet to emerge.”

April 22: Yuri Deigin, a biotech entrepreneur, in a long and detailed post on Medium, reviews “gain-of-function” research undertaken at the lab and concludes that “from a technical standpoint, it would not be difficult for a modern virologist to create such a strain” as the new coronavirus. He adds: “The opposite point is worth repeating too: the inverse hypothesis about the exclusively natural origin of the virus does not yet have strong evidence either.”

April 24: Under pressure from the White House, the National Institutes of Health terminates the grant to EcoHealth Alliance that funded study of bat coronaviruses at WIV.

April 30: President Donald Trump tells reporters: “You had the theory from the lab. … There’s a lot of theories. But, yeah, we have people looking at it very, very strongly.”

May 3: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says in an interview with ABC News: “There’s enormous evidence that that’s where this began. … Remember, China has a history of infecting the world, and they have a history of running substandard laboratories. These are not the first times that we have had the world exposed to viruses as a result of failures in a Chinese lab.”

June 4: Milton Leitenberg, writing in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, reviews the history of lab safety and the type of research conducted at WIV and argues that the lab-leak theory cannot be easily dismissed. “The pros and cons regarding the two alternative possibilities—first, that it arose in the field as a natural evolution, as many virologists maintain, or second, that it may have been the consequence of bat coronavirus research in one of the two virology research institutes located in Wuhan that led to the infection of a laboratory researcher and subsequent escape—are equally based on inference and conjecture,” he says.

New evidence emerges

July 4: The Times of London reports that a virus 96 percent identical to the coronavirus that causes covid-19 was found in an abandoned copper mine in China in 2012. The bat-infested copper mine in southwestern China was home to a coronavirus that left six men sick with pneumonia, with three eventually dying, after they had been tasked with shoveling bat guano out of the mine. This virus was collected in 2013 and then stored and studied at WIV.

July 28: Jamie Metzl, a former Clinton administration national security official, writes in The Wall Street Journal that “suggesting that an outbreak of a deadly bat coronavirus coincidentally occurred near the only level 4 virology institute in all of China—which happened to be studying the closest known relative of that exact virus—strains credulity.” He calls for a “comprehensive forensic investigation must include full access to all of the scientists, biological samples, laboratory records and other materials from the Wuhan virology institutes and other relevant Chinese organizations. Denying that access should be considered an admission of guilt by Beijing.”

July 31: Science magazine publishes an interview with Shi Zhengli of WIV. She said it was impossible for anyone at the institute to have been infected, saying “to date, there is ‘zero infection’ of all staff and students in our institute.” She added: “President Trump’s claim that SARS-CoV-2 was leaked from our institute totally contradicts the facts. It jeopardizes and affects our academic work and personal life. He owes us an apology.” In the interview, she admitted that some coronavirus research was conducted at biosafety level 2, not the more restrictive BSL-4.

Nov. 17: An influential paper written by Rossana Segreto and Yuri Deigin is published: “The genetic structure of SARS-CoV-2 does not rule out a laboratory origin.” The paper noted that “a natural host, either direct or intermediate, has not yet been identified.” It argues that certain features of the coronavirus “might be the result of lab manipulation techniques such as site-directed mutagenesis. The acquisition of both unique features by SARS-CoV-2 more or less simultaneously is less likely to be natural or caused only by cell/animal serial passage.” The paper concluded: “On the basis of our analysis, an artificial origin of SARS-CoV-2 is not a baseless conspiracy theory that is to be condemned,” referencing the Lancet statement in February.

Nov. 17: WIV researchers, including Shi, post an addendum to their Feb. 3 report in Nature, acknowledging that RaTG13, the bat coronavirus closely associated with the coronavirus, was found in a mine cave after several patients had fallen ill with “severe respiratory disease” in 2012 while cleaning the cave.

Jan. 4, 2021: New York magazine publishes a lengthy article by Nicholson Baker, who reviews the evidence and concludes the lab-leak scenario is more compelling than previously believed.

Jan. 15: Days before Trump leaves office, the State Department issues a “fact sheet” on WIV that states: “The U.S. government has reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both covid-19 and common seasonal illnesses. … The WIV has a published record of conducting ‘gain-of-function’ research to engineer chimeric viruses. But the WIV has not been transparent or consistent about its record of studying viruses most similar to the covid-19 virus, including ‘RaTG13,’ which it sampled from a cave in Yunnan Province in 2013 after several miners died of SARS-like illness.”

Jan. 20: Joe Biden becomes president.

Feb. 9: A joint report by the World Health Organization and China declares: “The findings suggest that the laboratory incident hypothesis is extremely unlikely to explain introduction of the virus into the human population.”

Feb. 11: WHO Secretary General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus refuses to rule out the lab-leak scenario. “Some questions have been raised as to whether some hypotheses have been discarded,” he said. “I want to clarify that all hypotheses remain open and require further study.”

Feb. 19: National security adviser Jake Sullivan issues a statement about the WHO report: “We have deep concerns about the way in which the early findings of the COVID19 investigation were communicated and questions about the process used to reach them. It is imperative that this report be independent, with expert findings free from intervention or alteration by the Chinese government. To better understand this pandemic and prepare for the next one, China must make available its data from the earliest days of the outbreak.”

March 4: Prominent scientists from around the world, in an open letter to WHO, call for a new investigation into the origins of the virus, saying the previous investigation was flawed. The letter detailed the elements of a “full and unrestricted” investigation.

March 22: The Australian newspaper reports: “Wuhan Institute of Virology researchers working on corona­viruses were hospitalized with symptoms consistent with covid-19 in early November 2019 in what U.S. officials suspect could have been the first cluster.”

May 5: Former New York Times science reporter Nicholas Wade, writing in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, reviews the evidence and makes a strong case for the lab-leak theory. He focuses in particular on the furin cleavage site, which increases viral infectivity for human cells. His analysis yields this quote from David Baltimore, a virologist and former president of the California Institute of Technology: “When I first saw the furin cleavage site in the viral sequence, with its arginine codons, I said to my wife it was the smoking gun for the origin of the virus. These features make a powerful challenge to the idea of a natural origin for SARS2.”

May 14: Eighteen prominent scientists publish a letter in the journal Science, saying a new investigation is needed because “theories of accidental release from a lab and zoonotic spillover both remain viable.” One signer is Ralph Baric, a virologist who worked closely with Shi.

May 17: Another former New York Times science reporter, Donald G. McNeil Jr., posts on Medium: “How I Learned to Stop Worrying And Love the Lab-Leak Theory.” He quotes W. Ian Lipkin of Columbia University — who had signed the March 2020 letter in Nature Medicine — as saying his mind had changed in light of new information.