China lab suspected of Covid leak stripped of US funding for violating biosafety rules

ComradeChairmanKGB , 9 months ago

(X)

ShimmeringKoi , 9 months ago

Damn even the nonpolitical homies are dunking on this one

Lifecoach5000 , 9 months ago

Did this thread get nuked? Says there should be 57 comments.

TheAnonymouseJoker , 9 months ago

Looks like West is so empty culturally and in terms of development that they have to regurgitate an ancient conspiracy theory debunked hundreds of times. Even that US Nobel awarded doctor who proposed the smoking gun conspiracy theory, himself denied that it was possible from China.

Koboldschadenfroh , 9 months ago

deleted_by_author

Silverseren , 9 months ago

The US funds research on a variety of subjects around the world, many of them only being possible to be researched locally because they are on local diseases and pathogens.

HMH , 9 months ago

Less regulations, it’s easier to do “funny stuff” like gain of function research (frankly a euphemism for biological warfare research) in China than in the US. And it’s not like the US is just funding the biolab, they have people on site and oversight as well.

Farman , 9 months ago

What if covid was a terrorist atack on china and iran by obama loyalists? With the aded benefit ithat it put them back in power.

zephyreks , 9 months ago

Ah yes, because it’s not like there are any geopolitical reasons that might explain why the NIH would want to decouple from China.

Fact is, you can find infractions from any lab. It’s just a question of whether you want to look.

hark , 9 months ago

Looks like lab leak theory is back on the menu boys!

winterayars , 9 months ago

I feel like i’m taking crazy pills!

Xylight , 9 months ago (edited 9 months ago)

Hexbear users coming to defend China before even reading the post title:

https://media.tenor.com/sN83kxZQ3GcAAAAC/shrek-run.gif

NullaFacies , 9 months ago

https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/4f668695-27ad-43f7-9cf8-423eaaa26292.webp

AdmiralShat , 9 months ago

They’re coming in with their alts now. If you check some of the profiles on here, look how often China is mentioned and tell me it’s not just obviously Hexbear users with alts

TheAnonymouseJoker , 9 months ago

Its always AdmiralShat, the slickest turd in the West!

C4RCOSA , 9 months ago

Did you read past the post title before firing up your meme folder to participate?

In earlier correspondence with The Telegraph, Dr Peter Daszak, the British zoologist and president of EcoHealth Alliance, said that its work >with WIV did not fall under restricted gain-of-function research.

“None of the work changed animal viruses so they can infect humans – they only infected human cell cultures and that’s a big difference,” >said Dr Daszak.

He also said the experiments were exempt because the original viruses were not infectious to humans.

However, White House officials told The Telegraph the work did fall under gain-of-function rules and would have required review.

Gerald Epstein, former assistant director for biosecurity and emerging technologies at the White House Office of Science and Technology >Police between 2016 and 2018, said: “I oversaw development of the US government’s enhanced potential pandemic pathogens (ePPP) >policy usually referred to as gain-of-function.

“EcoHealth claimed that their work engineering bat coronaviruses could not have been ePPP research because the original viruses were >not pathogenic to humans. That is apparently their position, but it is clearly incorrect.”

So Epstein (lol) a man who works with the US government is claiming that a lab he has never visited has violated the ePPP policy, while a >researcher WHO did work there and is NOT Chinese is stating that it didn’t.

There is just as much evidence that the leak came from Fort Detrick however the “lab leak theory” for COVID is cope and not relevant to the average person especially since the world has decided the pandemic is over, to stop masking, testing, or providing immunizations.

Xylight , 9 months ago

I am aware that this news article may be misleading. That’s not the point of my comment.

idunnololz , 9 months ago

Sup guys. Just commenting here so you can avoid reading the most brainlet of a take below. Hope you all have a good day.

btbt , 9 months ago

https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/1bead459-16b4-477b-b9aa-8322c3485e12.jpeg

Tankiedesantski , 9 months ago

https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/30dec393-ff3c-4c15-b700-d3b3f7d5ec65.jpeg

TrismegistusMx , 9 months ago

Yeah, the US and China were working together on gain of function research of coronavirus in a lab in Wuhan run by Dr Fauci in 2019, but if you mention it you’re crazy.

justdoit , 9 months ago

No self-respecting scientist concluded that either a natural origin or a lab leak were the definitive cause of the pandemic. This is clear if you actually read scientific literature. It’s why phrases akin to “the most supported hypothesis is X” or “the Y theory is unlikely without more supporting evidence” are used. Both hypotheses were and are still possible explanations.

It’s people who get their scientific info from sources like the Telegraph that keep jumping to conclusions. Or people who don’t understand what a section leader at the NIH does, how research grants work, or what gain of function research is. You know, like yourself.

TrismegistusMx , 9 months ago

Yeah, it was just coincidence that the exact same strain evolved in the wild and transferred to humans in the same place at the same time!

MossyFeathers , 9 months ago (edited 9 months ago)

sigh I know you’ve probably either already made up your mind or you’re not arguing in good faith, so I’m not gonna engage any further except to say that it’s entirely possible for a virologist to do research on zoonotic viruses. Just because it’s a bat virus doesn’t mean it stays a bat virus.

Also, there are probably billions if not trillions or quadrillions of individual COVID viruses out there. Each time a new one’s made, there’s a chance for it to mutate into something else. It’s totally possible for a virus to evolve similar features in separate environments. I believe the term, “convergent evolution” applies here, and you can find examples larger than viruses in plants and animals, where even separate species can sometimes evolve the same features independently from one another. Carcinisation is an extreme example of this.

Ropianos , 9 months ago

Just so you know, not only them are reading your response. I appreciate your response.

And as someone that isn’t working in the field, I have to admit that it is very illogical that they would conduct gain-of-function research on coronaviruses in a country previously hit by a coronavirus outbreak while violating safety standards. Obviously that’s hindsight but shouldn’t this be very obviously a bad idea? It’s not like the existence of a virus like COVID-19/sarscov-2 was completely unexpected.

Silverseren , 9 months ago

I mean, you'd do the research where you would be finding the wild zoonotic pathogens you want to study. So the location makes perfect sense.

The biosafety issues are more just a long-standing problem with how science is done in China in general, which is overall bad.

TrismegistusMx , 9 months ago

So you admit that China has lax protocols, and that the US and China were studying the same virus that became a problem later, but you offer me nothing but insults for wondering if that same virus leaked from that same poor quality lab.

I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.

PowerCrazy , 9 months ago

Oh, I guess since it was “illogical” there is no way that could be the origin.

Ropianos , 9 months ago

I meant what actually happened is illogical to me. So I’m simply a bit confused and understand that there might be some nuance that I’m missing.

And I think an accidental leak is absolutely possible, it’s only that a conscious effort by China and the USA is unrealistic.

TrismegistusMx , 9 months ago

Of course virologists study viruses, and sloppy government labs in backwater parts of authoritarian countries have lax safety protocols. You haven’t contradicted me one time. You’ve just thrown up strawmen and irrelevant arguments.

winterayars , 9 months ago

That doesn’t prove shit. You understand that nothing you say there is contributing to your argument, right?

TrismegistusMx , 9 months ago

You understand that I’m just casting doubt on the official narrative and the people arguing are the ones vested in their narrative, right?

justdoit , 9 months ago

The original grant was to the EcoHealth Alliance, which then subcontracted the Wuhan institute to collect wild samples from bats. In other words, the whole point of the research was to try and catalogue viruses that existed in the wild with pandemic potential.

It’s not coincidence that lab samples there or in other facilities exist that are close in sequence to viruses later identified in humans. That was, in fact, the goddamn point of surveying bat coronaviruses: to identify those with spillover potential. And it’s absolutely possible one of these collected samples was mishandled and leaked from the lab. After all, lab leaked viral outbreaks happen almost every other year, and there were already safety concerns at this particular site published long before the pandemic.

But what you and every other mouthbreathing idiot is trying to say is that Fauci, a director of the NIAID at the time, personally directed gain of function research to engineer new viruses to infect humans and then that virus escaped. Which, speaking as a molecular biologist myself, is laughably backwards.

bandario , 9 months ago (edited 9 months ago)

It seems like you’ve read enough to get halfway there.

You should go back and read the source documents and go over what ecohealth alliance were actually doing, and where they were doing it. The funding proposals were extremely detailed, right down to carrying out gain of function research to aerosolise the corona viruses harvested from bats.

It is almost impossible to immunise bats using droplet transmission and this is the source of the global fuckup.

At some stage during this process, the modified pathogen from very early stages of developing a corona vaccine FOR BATS (the stated goal of the funding request) it somehow got out of one of the labs involved. (Malice or stupidity, we’ll never know)

At that stage it would still be fair to call the original escaped variant a VIRUS because it had not yet reached the development stage of being attenuated sufficiently to be called a vaccine, but it was a long way from a wild type variant.

This lines up with early sequencing of the virus that is widely documented. Those with any scientific integrity have acknowledged from day 1 that there were portions of the sequence that can not occur without human intervention.

In short, this was all being done with US funding in labs with woefully inadequate safety protocols.

So long as we are prepared to accept the risk/reward profile of gain of function research being carried out anywhere in the world, the risk of a similar global pandemic will never go away.

justdoit , 9 months ago (edited 9 months ago)

Grant Project Number: 2R01AI110964-06

“Aim 1. Characterize the diversity and distribution of high spillover-risk SARSr-CoVs in bats in southern China. We will use phylogeographic and viral discovery curve analyses to target additional bat sample collection and molecular CoV screening to fill in gaps in our previous sampling and fully characterize natural SARSr-CoV diversity in southern China. We will sequence receptor binding domains (spike proteins) to identify viruses with the highest potential for spillover which we will include in our experimental investigations (Aim 3). Aim 2. Community, and clinic-based syndromic, surveillance to capture SARSr-CoV spillover, routes of exposure and potential public health consequences. We will conduct biological-behavioral surveillance in high-risk populations, with known bat contact, in community and clinical settings to 1) identify risk factors for serological and PCR evidence of bat SARSr-CoVs; & 2) assess possible health effects of SARSr-CoVs infection in people. We will analyze bat-CoV serology against human-wildlife contact and exposure data to quantify risk factors and health impacts of SARSr-CoV spillover. Aim 3. In vitro and in vivo characterization of SARSr-CoV spillover risk, coupled with spatial and phylogenetic analyses to identify the regions and viruses of public health concern. We will use S protein sequence data, infectious clone technology, in vitro and in vivo infection experiments and analysis of receptor binding to test the hypothesis that % divergence thresholds in S protein sequences predict spillover potential.”

Color me shocked, but that’s the funding proposal and there’s nothing in there even approaching whatever you’re talking about. But hey, maybe you’re referring to the rejected DARPA grant proposal leaked by DRASTIC:

“THE PROPOSAL PLANNED TO INTRODUCE “KEY RBD RESIDUES” INTO LOW RISK STRAINS TO TEST PATHOGENICITY IN HUMAN AIRWAY-CELLS”

Wowie, looks like we have a hit! Rather than reading their spin though, I went and found the REJECTED grant proposal:

“We will sequence spike proteins, reverse engineer them to conduct binding assays, and insert them into bat SARSr-CoV backbones (these use bat-SARSr-CoV backbones, not SARS-CoV, and are exempt from dual-use and gain or function concerns)”

If you’re not aware, these backbones are common lab vectors which aren’t pathogenic themselves, made from different viruses. Their sequences are significantly different than either SARS-CoV or SARS-CoV-2. So, chimeric receptor/backbone pairs are used to assess viral entry into humanized cells more so than virulence. You may disagree with whether or not that’s still too dangerous of a method, but it’s a moot point here because 1. The backbones proposed here are completely different than COVID, so it can’t be the same viral agent and 2. This is a REJECTED PROPOSAL. None of this was actually done and it’s fantasy to pretend it is.

Next claim: aerosolized droplet for vaccines:

“We will complement [broad scale immune boosting with bat interferon] by coupling agonist treatments with SARSr-CoV recombinant spike proteins to boost pre-existing adaptive immune response in adult bats… we will incorporate [recombinant spike proteins] into nano particles or raccoon pox virus vectors for delivery to bats”

They’re not proposing aerosolizing whole droplets with competent SARS-CoV in them you moron, they’re basically saying “hey, you know those nasal sprays we use for the flu every year? Let’s give that to bats”.

Ooh, my favorite. No scientist with integrity says that the genome wasn’t manipulated.

You’re gonna have to tell that to the couple hundred scientists who have been studying this for a while:

“There is no logical reason why an engineered virus would utilize such a suboptimal furin cleavage site, which would entail such an un- usual and needlessly complex feat of genetic engineering. The only previous studies of artificial insertion of a furin cleavage site at the S1/S2 boundary in the SARS-CoV spike protein uti- lized an optimal ‘‘RRSRR’’ sequence in pseudotype systems (Belouzard et al., 2009; Follis et al., 2006). Further, there is no ev- idence of prior research at the WIV involving the artificial insertion of complete furin cleavage sites into coronaviruses.”

There really isn’t any evidence of manipulation at all. The backbone isn’t a standard lab construct. The cleavage site could have arisen from recombination. In the spirit of good science, I would never rule anything out, but the evidence very much supports a natural origin. Lab leak from a sample? Maybe, but that’s different than genetic engineering. For that you need stronger evidence. The strongest bit of evidence we have is the stonewalling from WIV and China, which is certainly suspicious. But, it’s unfortunately incidental and that isn’t good enough to jump to conclusions.

Try actually reading the text of these proposals before reading someone else’s spin on it.

notacat , 9 months ago

I am somehow still surprised at how many of my intelligent, educated healthcare coworkers believe in the purposeful bio weapon theory despite there being no evidence of human-made genetic manipulation. We can analyze whole genomes now, there’s no need to make shit up.

justdoit , 9 months ago

Yeah, it’s pretty sad. But I have fun digging into the sources for the misinformation, so there’s that.

TrismegistusMx , 9 months ago

If you were secure in your beliefs, you could use logic, science, or evidence.

You use insults. I question, you insult. Who is wrong?

justdoit , 9 months ago

Funny, you haven’t “questioned” anything. You’ve just regurgitated your same tired disproven talking points. Then you act like your viewpoint deserves respect. It doesn’t. No sources, no evidence, no respect.

If you’d like my sources, here you go. Let me know when you find the spot that says “I, Fauci, personally oversaw the development of a virus that looks absurdly natural in origin.”

The original grant proposal for EcoHealth Alliance: reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9819304

Every relevant follow up study produced under that grant proposal:

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6171170/

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7094983/

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6178078/

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7097006/

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7148670/

TrismegistusMx , 9 months ago

I haven’t posted any evidence because I’ve only posted reservations about the narrative. You have chosen to attack me personally and you FINALLY posted several studies that do not say anything about containment, lab procedure, the contents of the lab, or anything else that might assuage my doubts. What they do prove is that gain of function research was being performed on SARS in the area where the pandemic first started. You accuse me of being irrational when you’re losing your god damned mind at the very idea that the lab could be the source of the pandemic.

justdoit , 9 months ago

Quite a fast reader, aren’t you?

Please cite the spot in those documents that “prove gain of function research was being performed on SARS in the area the pandemic first started”

TrismegistusMx , 9 months ago

Those documents you posted are ancillary to the actual experimentation. Here’s some more details for you.

documentcloud.org/…/21055989-understanding-risk-b…journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.137…

But the research on the bat viruses in Wuhan showed that infecting live animals with altered viruses can have unpredictable consequences. A report to NIH on the project’s progress in the year ending in May 2018 described scientists creating new coronaviruses by changing parts of WIV1 and exposing genetically engineered mice to the new chimeric viruses. Research published in 2017 in the journal PLOS Pathogen showed that, in cells in a laboratory, similar chimeric viruses reproduced less effectively than the original. NIH cited that research as one of the reasons the moratorium on gain-of-function research of concern didn’t apply to this experiment. “It was a loss of function, not a gain of function,” the email from NIH explained. (NIH also pointed out that the changes to the chimeric viruses “would not be anticipated to increase virulence or transmissibility in humans.”)

Inside the lungs of the humanized mice, however, the novel viruses appear to have reproduced far more quickly than the original virus that was used to create them, according to a bar graph shown in the documents. The viral load in the lung tissue of the mice was, at certain points, up to 10,000 times higher in the mice infected with the altered viruses than in those infected with WIV1. According to Deatrick, the NIH spokesperson, the difference in the rates of viral reproduction — which were particularly pronounced two and four days after the mice were infected with the virus — didn’t amount to gain of function because, by the end of the experiment, the amount of virus produced by the parent and chimeric strains evened out. “Viral titers were equivalent by the end of the experimental time-course,” Deatrick wrote. The email also said, “NIH supports this type of research to better understand the characteristics of animal viruses that have the potential to spill over to humans and cause widespread disease.”

Scientists The Intercept consulted expressed differing views on whether the increase in viral load could be translated to an increase in transmissibility, which relies on the virus’s ability to replicate. To some, the jump in viral load indicated that the modified RNA virus could replicate far more rapidly than the original in the lungs of the mice, likely leading to increased pathogenicity and spread. Rasmussen, of the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization, pointed out that viral load is not identical to reproduction rate, noting: “This shows the chimeric viruses replicated a little faster, but that tells us exactly nothing about transmissibility. Furthermore, WIV1 caught up by the end of the experiment. We see differences in the rate of viral replication all the time, but it is often not directly correlated with pathogenicity.”

Another figure in the documents suggests that at least one of the altered viruses not only enhanced viral reproduction, but also caused the humanized mice to lose more weight than those exposed to the original virus — a measure of the severity of illness.

theintercept.com/…/covid-origins-gain-of-function…

The real question is still, "Why did you immediately jump to personal attacks, infodumping irrelevant studies, and why are you vehemently defending this lab as if you’re the one who caused the leak?

justdoit , 9 months ago (edited 9 months ago)

Oh boy, so this is where you stumbled. I should have known it would be The Intercept article.

The documents are ancillary, huh? You cited the exact same grant proposal I sent you. So is it ancillary or not?

Here are some really critical points I’m willing to bet you misunderstood:

“We will construct chimeric SARSr-CoVs using WIV1 backbone and the S genes of selected SARSr-CoV strains and assess capacity to infect hACE2, bACE2, and cACE2 Vero cells…”

The WIV1 backbone is NOT the backbone found in SARS-CoV-2. It’s from a completely different human-infectious coronavirus strain. Furthermore, the spike proteins they’re studying would be gathered from bat coronaviruses found in the wild. So, this method is NOT considered GoF research by the NIH nor is it even potentially possible it resulted in the pandemic. They proposed assessing transmissibility by using an already known infectious backbone and an uncharacterized spike protein, not engineering a more deadly virus. WIV1 is already infectious in humans. The spike proteins gathered are the exact same sequences as those already present in the wild. You may still have reservations about this approach, but I’d argue it’s actually safer for studying viruses in this way because you use what’s known as a Bacterial Artificial Chromosome (BAC) to infect the cells rather than live virus. Meaning, no storage, handling, or serial passaging of viral samples is required past the initial isolation and the plaque assessments.

You may argue that any viral research which can result in genetic change should be classified unilaterally as GoF, and is too dangerous to be performed, much less at labs we don’t directly regulate. I would disagree on those points, but you’d join a rich debate on the subject which The Intercept article actually points out as well. But the fact remains that none of the above studies were designed to engineer more deadly pathogens for humans, and is ultimately a red herring for the SARS-CoV-2 debate. We know the backbone sequences and they do not match, so you and The Intercept article are barking up the wrong tree.

The same is true for the PLOS study you cited. Same viral backbone, same process. It’s there to assess transmissibility of a naturally occurring virus and try to predict future pandemic potential (of the original SARS-CoV, in their case), not to engineer more effective viruses. Same misunderstanding on its classification as GoF research, too. Even in the Intercept article you cite it talks about the results of other studies as technically “loss of function” in relation to some strains, which is true. But again, all of this is a red herring. SARS-CoV-2 did NOT use the backbone referenced here, and thus this study did not result in a genetically engineered virus that caused the pandemic.

As for citations, I’d point you to this snippet from a review article in Cell:

A near identical nucleotide sequence is found in the spike gene of the bat coro- navirus HKU9-1 (Gallaher, 2020), and both SARS-CoV-2 and HKU9-1 contain short palindromic sequences immediately up- stream of this sequence that are indicative of natural recombina- tion break-points via template switching (Gallaher, 2020). Hence, simple evolutionary mechanisms can readily explain the evolu- tion of an out-of-frame insertion of a furin cleavage site in SARS-CoV-2 (Figure 2).

You keep insisting that I think a lab leak is impossible, when I’ve made it very clear that a lab leak is still a possibility. There were safety concerns at Wuhan long before this whole thing. But a “lab leak” of a stored sample is completely different than “Fauci paid incompetent Chinese labs to engineer deadly pathogens”, and I’ve never seen evidence for the latter. Yet you’ve stated that sentiment here in the comment section, so somehow that unsubstantiated belief lives on. Until our pool of evidence changes, the most likely scenario is a zoonosis from a natural reservoir, or a lab leak from a gathered or cultured sample.

I’m curious why you seem so insistent that the evidence is being hidden and that everyone is silencing you. You come in here with unsubstantiated accusations, and then get angry when people call you out for it. Had you started with sources for your claims, I would have been happy to engage with you on that level. Acting like an ass in any forum isn’t going to get you far. Stop playing the victim.

TrismegistusMx , 9 months ago

I’ve yet to get angry or say that I’ve been silenced. I don’t need a wall of text to tell you that you’re full of shit and you’ve exceeded your allotment of wasting my time.

Silverseren , 9 months ago

The gain of function research on the same wild virus being done in conjunction with Germany?

Do you know any of the actual details of the project, where they were collecting wild bats infected with the proto version of Covid and were splitting up different components of the research to different labs?

The Wuhan group were researching the viral backbone and Germany the viral antigens.

The same sort of collaboration done on many other potentially concerning natural vector diseases.

TrismegistusMx , 9 months ago

You’re so invested in your narrative.

Silverseren , 9 months ago

You mean I've actually read the scientific data and evidence going back years before the pandemic? The research they were doing there and in Germany was well known and openly available. Published papers and all.

TrismegistusMx , 9 months ago

You haven’t read anything that proves COVID-19 wasn’t a lab leak, and everything you’ve read filtered through the people responsible. But you are invested in convincing me it wasn’t.

Silverseren , 9 months ago

The very scientist who first suggested that Covid was man-made changed his mind after doing further research and discovering that the components he thought were man-made were actually found in other wild Sars viruses.

You're the one who refuses to listen to actual evidence beyond the initial claims you first heard.

TrismegistusMx , 9 months ago

The only evidence you’ve presented is the statement that Germany was involved.

shapesandstuff , 9 months ago

How do you think scientific publications work?

They don’t go through the high council of evil science-lords first.

TrismegistusMx , 9 months ago

Have you seen any scientific publications posted to these comments that prove the pandimic didn’t result from a lab leak? I haven’t.

notacat , 9 months ago

What possible evidence would there be to “prove” this negative? Maybe if we happened to find the exact source animal to test? Since that is unlikely, all we have to go is the genome of the virus compared to similar viruses in the wild and similar viruses in published research. And that wouldn’t be proof enough for you.

TrismegistusMx , 9 months ago

You don’t need to prove or disprove a negative. You simply must allow for it to be a possibility unless evidence comes forth which proves that the doubts are unfounded. For instance, if patient zero was found and they had no contact with the lab, if a wild source of COVID-19 with the same genetic structure was found, or if it was proven than none of the samples in the lab could be the source of the infection.

The problem here is that I opened up the possibility by asking the question, and hateful, partial, non-scientific minds decided to dogpile me for threatening their beliefs and faith in authority.

shapesandstuff , 9 months ago

There are a ton now, which you already replied to. If only you’d post your own now.

TrismegistusMx , 9 months ago

My own what? I am posting my own doubts about the story. Do I need evidence to distrust two governments with a history of experimenting on their populations?

Gork , 9 months ago

Now I want to be invited to an evil science-lord convention.

Bonus points if it is held in an underground volcanic lair.

Zorque , 9 months ago

If so, you're two of a kind.

TrismegistusMx , 9 months ago

I’ve yet to be given one solid reason to question my questioning of the official narrative. The other guy only posted character attacks and appeals to questionable authorities.

Zorque , 9 months ago

Do you just... like... look in a mirror, then post random comments attacking people for your own failings or something? Cause that's what seems to be happening.

TrismegistusMx , 9 months ago

Where did you see me attack anybody? You should be able to quote me. What seems to be happening from my perspective is a bunch of people with poor reading comprehension or no integrity attacking me for doubting the official narrative.

Beanedwizard , 9 months ago

https://i.imgur.com/WVhnFmS.jpg

TrismegistusMx , 9 months ago

I question narratives and I’m met by insults. If the people responding had any evidence or were secure in their narrative they wouldn’t need to resort to insults first.

NightAuthor , 9 months ago

Have they found an animal with a strain related to the human variant? Isn’t that the main evidence they expect to be able to find to help prove it actually had a path from animal to human?

TrismegistusMx , 9 months ago

If so, I haven’t seen it. As far as I can tell, investigating the narrative is off limits. You can see how every person who has responded to my questioning has attacked me on a personal level.

NightAuthor , 9 months ago (edited 9 months ago)

I don’t know if those attacking you are right or wrong in the narrative they believe, but they’re definitely jumping to conclusions about people who choose to believe in the possibility of a lab leak and subsequent coverup. It seems they think all of us to be conspiracy theory nutjobs with alt-right ideologies.

Personally, I started believing the lab leak stuff may be legit when I watch johnny harris’s video. I figured Johnny Harris was giving a decent take on the whole situation. He had numerous reasons for coming to the conclusions he did, and it all seems decently reasonable.

But recently it’s come to my attention that maybe Harris isn’t the most reliable source. While I can’t recall the details atm, I have read and watched stuff about Harris that does call into question his biases. At the same time, I don’t believe anyone has said anything against his factual accuracy. But the slant of a presentation and possibly excluded information can do quite a bit for undermining a narrative if you really want to do that. So, its hard to say if you should believe his story about the lab leak.

But, It’s not like I’m gonna do anything useful with my opinion on the topic…. So I’m not going to waste time seriously investing in researching the topic.

Edit: Reworded, and added context that I completely left out the first time around.

TrismegistusMx , 9 months ago

I have no idea what you’re talking about.

NightAuthor , 9 months ago

I made a couple of jumps in thought that I did not originally put into that comment. It’s been updated to, hopefully, be much clearer.

TrismegistusMx , 9 months ago

So wild that people are reacting so violently to mere questioning. Makes me wonder if these comments are being astroturfed by vested parties.

AdmiralShat , 9 months ago

Source on that claim?

Nakoichi , 9 months ago

This is stupid. There is just as much evidence it came from Fort Detrick.

For the record I don’t think it came from either.

TheFriar , 9 months ago

That’s the thing, the COVID conspiracy people now posting this shirt saying, “SEE!?! IT WAS LAB LEAK!!” as if that justifies every single other insane thing they’ve ever said about COVID. Because there’s a huge difference between “covid CAME FROM a lab” and “lab leak possible origin.” One implies conspiracy, the other implies carelessness. What’s the old saying? ‘Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to greed?’ I very much think the same applies to stupidity—and honestly, in this case, greed probably caused the stupidity. How much funding-slashing has led to calamity in recent times? Plenty.

itsonlygeorge , 9 months ago

I think the lab with a long record of carelessness leaking the virus by accident is entirely plausible if not the most reasonable explanation. The issue is not so much about how/when it was leaked, but more along the lines of how poorly they handled the whole situation and subsequent coverup. For all we know, it could have been leaked by accident way earlier.

wintermute_oregon , 9 months ago

Exactly The issue is how China handled all of this. America has had leaks before as have other countries. China has several well known leaks.

China is still trying to hide the origins which to me heavily suggest a lab leak.

jonne , 9 months ago

Yeah, I don’t really have any issues with accepting a lab leak possibility, but the lab leak people generally add a whole bunch of other conspiracies on top of that (it was designed as a bioweapon, leaked intentionally, etc), and nobody can really explain why this would be any good as a bioweapon if it hurts you as much as your enemies, and if you release it without having a vaccine for it.

itsonlygeorge , 9 months ago

I think the bio weapon part is from people who don’t understand what research is going on lab. They hear “gain of function” research and immediately think Resident Evil type bio weapon.

Not that I agree that type of research is good for us to be doing in the first place. But I do understand the reason we do that type if research is to learn about viruses and how to combat them as they mutate. I think it’s stupid to be doing that type of research anywhere, especially finding China.

notacat , 9 months ago

“Gain of function” is an extremely broad category that is an absolutely necessary part of molecular biology research.

GarbageShoot , 9 months ago

I think the lab with a long record of carelessness leaking the virus by accident is entirely plausible if not the most reasonable explanation

I personally don’t think it came from Detrick, but I don’t fault you for thinking so

itsonlygeorge , 9 months ago

It came from the lab in Wuhan, not Detrick. We shall never really know since every govt, especially China will deny and cover up the truth.

CombatLiberalism , 9 months ago

It didn’t come from a lab in Wuhan, it was first discovered in Wuhan but was already going around in Italy for months at that point based on waste samples.

The point was that we have just as much evidence to say it came from Detrick as we do to say it came from a Chinese lab. It most likely didn’t come from either, but only one of these conspiracies gets pushed. If you provide any pushback that maybe China isn’t responsible for COVID you get met with “well they would lie and cover it up, so I might as well be right”

TheOctonaut , 9 months ago

I don’t know why anyone is still talking about a lab outbreak in Wuhan because of the wet market nearby being suspected in mid December, when we know for sure that Covid was in Italy in September/October and possibly as early as May. The world just shrugged at this info because faecal treatment samples aren’t as interesting as as bat soup and bioterrorism.

Infamousblt , 9 months ago

Racism mostly. Easier to just be racist against the Chinese than to admit COVID is the result of something more nuanced and systemic

Zorque , 9 months ago

It's also about laziness. It's much less effort to just point a finger than to think about the complexities of a situation.

PowerCrazy , 9 months ago

It’s also really easy to dismiss the uncomfortable origin (It came from a Chinese lab) and point to the “complexities of the situation” instead.

InvertedParallax , 9 months ago

Nobody has a problem with Chinese people.

But the CCP needs to be given the Beria treatment.

GarbageShoot , 9 months ago

Nobody has a problem with Chinese people.

yahoo.com/…/tucker-carlson-guest-military-doesnt-…

InvertedParallax , 9 months ago

Yeah, and hitler didn’t like jews.

It’s tucker fucking Carlson, duh.

Ask him about gay people and immigrants next.

GarbageShoot , 9 months ago

The clip is actually mainly about his guest, but anyway my point is that your claim was clearly false.

Infamousblt , 9 months ago

And by every major polling organizations metrics the Chinese people overwhelmingly approve of the CPC.

Typical westoid wants to destroy a government that is liked by it’s people. What’s your countries government approval rating? Do you want to overthrow your government too?

InvertedParallax , 9 months ago

I worked there for a good while.

They don’t hate it, they treat it like the weather, something to fear, but nothing you can do anything about.

The CCP broke them completely, much like the USSR broke the Russian people.

Tankiedesantski , 9 months ago

I worked there for a good while.

Tell us of the deep abiding wisdom you gained from teaching English at a barely-regulated “school” for 12 months.

PosadistInevitablity , 9 months ago

“We don’t hate the Chinese just the government that they like and has made their people prosperous.”

Check what happened to the Russians after the Soviet Union fell and tell me it’s not hate to wish that on the Chinese next.

InvertedParallax , 9 months ago

The USSR (Stalin mostly) broke the Russian people, which is why they’re so weak after its fall.

The CCP broke the Chinese people too. Seems like a common theme.

PosadistInevitablity , 9 months ago

Hahaha what the fuck

GenderIsOpSec , 9 months ago

stalin-comical-spoon going around people’s houses, knocking on doors and telling them that stroganoff had to be made with pork now to break them mentally. it’s true, my grandma told me cri

TheGamingLuddite , 9 months ago

What does it mean to “break” a people?

The Chinese people were certainly already “broken” in 1949. They had undergone a century of collapse, most were illiterate, women were essentially chattel, and every single grain of wheat or rice more than what was required to keep them alive was stolen by unelected landlords.

The communists took power and every single one of them was taught to read, women were enfranchised, no-fault divorce and abortion were legalized, political rights were expanded, opium and gangs were chased out of the mainland and the feudal lords were held to account.

30 years after the revolution they had turned a society of feudal peasants into a nuclear power, 30 years after that and it’s the world’s largest economy by PPP.

The same things can be said about the Bolsheviks, who defeated a nazi army which sought to annihilate them.

Thordros , 9 months ago

“I’m not racist, nobody has a problem with Chinese people.”

“Also, the Chinese are wild animals that were broken and domesticated.”

Okay there, buckaroo. Keep telling yourself that.

BelieveRevolt , 9 months ago

I’m not racist, but here’s my thoughts generalizing entire populations of millions as “weak people” because of their Asiatic brainpans.

determinism2 , 9 months ago

who broke you?

ShimmeringKoi , 9 months ago

Yeah man definitely no racism here https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/e44a54e7-fc3b-4e08-b5cd-347ba3fc4a2b.jpeg

photonic_sorcerer , 9 months ago

Any sources on the virus being discovered in Italy before China? That would change the entire discussion.

Oisteink , 9 months ago

reuters.com/…/health-coronavirus-italy-timing-idU…

There’s no similar tests done in China (that I can find traces of) so we have no idea when the virus started circulating in China. Just like Winnie the Poo likes it.

alternative_factor , 9 months ago

Yup, this idea only works if you believe what the CCP says verbatim.

TheOctonaut , 9 months ago

Well, no, it’s not an “idea”. It just means there’s nothing special about Wuhan that should make us look at everything there as a suspect.

alternative_factor , 9 months ago

You are wrong, the assumption of people who post this is that there wasn't COVID-19 in China before the CCP announced it was around.

TheOctonaut , 9 months ago

You’re the one making assumptions I’m afraid.

We don’t know where Covid-19 came from. That is the outcome. It quite well could have come from China. We have no idea. What we do know is that it didn’t spread globally from a wet market in Wuhan that happens to be near a virology research centre. Because that idea hangs entirely on it appearing there first in December.

Covid-19 could have started in China. Or Italy. Or anywhere. We don’t know, and as a species we seem to be very reluctant to find out - we’ve just accepted bat soup or bioterrorism and just moved on. Meaning that we’ve learned absolutely nothing to prevent it happening again.

alternative_factor , 9 months ago (edited 9 months ago)

From the genetics of the virus we can tell it originally came from either Pangolins or species of bats which are local to Asia only, which is why the wet market hypothesis is so popular in the first place because the virus is 99% similar to that of one found in Chinese pangolins. The 1% genetic difference could come from a lab on accident, but that would most likely be from the Wuhan lab and not for Detrick because the Wuhan lab was in fact experimenting with Chinese bats.

EDIT for sources:
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abh0117

TheOctonaut , 9 months ago

Do you understand that still the leap from “It’s 99% similar to Chinese pangolin coronavirus” (and hey, you’re 99% similar to a Ugandan chimp) and “so the other 1% probably came from a lab in Wuhan”? Again, Wuhan is literally only linked to this story as the first place it was reported. No evidence at all places it in Wuhan first. We can say that’s a Chinese cover-up, but go ahead and say that, and recognise it as speculation.

alternative_factor , 9 months ago

Dude I'm a microbioligst, just look at the cladisitics of all the viruses similar to SARS-COIVD-2, it's undeniable that the virus is from China because of its similarity to that of the viruses in the pangolin and, it's like saying humans don't come from Africa, just because 1% is a big deal does not mean that all the genetic evidence shows that ALL its relatives come from China, just as ALL early homo species come from Africa.

TheOctonaut , 9 months ago (edited 9 months ago)

I’m absolutely 100% with you on it coming from Asian pangolins. That even quite likely ties it to Asian wet markets, or the illegal hunting trade. SARS and MERS were both zoonotic too. SARS came from the abuse of palm civets.

What you seem to not understand - and here’s where I get to dick-swing my tangentially related credentials - is that ‘wet markets’ are everywhere in China and indeed Asia. There’s a dozen in Wuhan alone. ‘Fresh market’ would be a much better name - it’s the opposite to a dry market, ie shelf-life goods and non-perishables. Google just calls them “Farmer’s Markets”, which is what they would be called in the US.

Fresh markets also happen to be places that people travel distance to get to - traders bringing produce, and people traveling to get stuff. Pangolins from as far away as India and Indonesia end up in China. The trade of exotic animals and especially ones with Chinese ‘medicine’ applications is horrendous in tropical Asia, where I spent a number of years, visiting China only once. It has a lot to do with why I turned veggie!

So again, there are thousands if not hundreds of thousands of ‘wet markets’ in Asia. The only distinction that one of Wuhan’s has is that it was reported there first, at least three months after the virus had already spread - maybe from China - as far as Italy. It makes it absurd to tie things up nice and simply as “oh, and there’s a virology lab in that city of 11 million people. Must have been a leak”. We have no idea.

I’m in Ireland. My grandmother died of a sudden and rapid onset of pneumonia in December 2019 that did not respond to ordinary treatment. My son was sick with something like a flu that give him the sniffles and sapped all energy from him for 2 days, which sticks only in mind because keeping him home resulted in a fight with the in-laws which means they haven’t seen him since. Could either of those things have been Covid? Again, no idea. Nobody sent anyone for strain testing, and Ireland, like most places, does not habitually keep waste treatment plant samples for later testing. Nobody has suggested an absurd cover-up by the Irish government of course. And the stories of a “bad flu” in autumn and winter of 2019 are everywhere.

UK flu season ‘starting early’: …nhs.uk/…/public-urged-to-act-fast-to-avoid-festi…

Europe in general complaining about flu symptoms and dry coughs in Winter 2019, analysed statistically: www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-81333-1

USA, higher cases than usual in South: cnbc.com/…/us-flu-season-arrives-early-driven-by-…

And, for all that’s useful about it, at least anecdotally from non-Chinese sources in Wuhan, the particular wet market didn’t even have pangolins or bats.

ox.ac.uk/…/wet-market-sources-covid-19-bats-and-p…

alternative_factor , 9 months ago (edited 9 months ago)

Everything you posted is circumstantial and CVOID is not like the flu in presentation. In fact to compare COVID to flu is conpiratorial in nature so I'm cutting it off with you here.
"It makes it absurd to tie things up nice and simply as “oh, and there’s a virology lab in that city of 11 million people. Must have been a leak”. We have no idea."
I did not say for sure it came from a lab, I am saying that if it did it probably came from the one in Wuhan, and you even aknowledge that I said the most likely case is pangolins in China, I'm going to just cut it off with you now because unfortunately you contradict yourself way to much and you're basically stuck in circular logic that it can't have come from china because you don't want it to have come from China.
You admit the first report comes from Wuhan, and all the genetic evidence points to it having come from an animal that had to be from asia at the very least, but then do another 180 and say well maybe it was from another place in asia, even though the first reports are from china, then you say I for sure said it was from a lab while I did not say that.

But for the last thing I say let me show you what COVID relatives we are talking about here, in order of how related they are to covid:
-RPYN06- first sequenced in China's Yunnan provience
-RMYN02 - Also Yunnan province
-PrC31- also Yunan province
These are the closest relatives of COVID, they are ALL from China's Yunnan province.

Other relatives:
RAtg13 - Also Yunnan province
RshSTT183 - Actually cambodia! only five degrees of seperation!!
RshSTT200- Cambodia too
CoVZC45- Uh oh! China again!
CoVZXC21- China again again
longquan140- China

so yeah, it's obviously from china. All of is ancestor are from China, except for the two from Cambodia and there's no contesting that.

TheOctonaut , 9 months ago

Covid absolutely is like the flu in presentation to ordinary people. That’s quite literally how the warning was communicated to the general public. Here’s quite literally the first sentence from my local health authority’s guidance.

Flu and COVID-19 The symptoms of COVID-19 (coronavirus) are like flu symptoms. The main difference is that you usually do not have shortness of breath when you have the flu.

www2.hse.ie/conditions/flu/symptoms-diagnosis/

At no point have I said it can’t have come from China. I said quite the opposite. I’m saying the first report coming from Wuhan in particular and a single wet market from the thousands in China when the specific virus had already spread internationally anywhere from 3 to 6 months earlier is an absurd thing for you to insist it came from Wuhan originally, and a ridiculous thing to make you say ‘most likely from the lab because they were studying bats’. Because yes, you did say it was ‘most likely’ from the Wuhan lab.

You’re trying to paint me as a conspiracy theorist because you like your own baseless conspiracy theory?

alternative_factor , 9 months ago

Where did I say it most likely came from a lab, qoute me right now.

TheOctonaut , 9 months ago (edited 9 months ago)

the virus is 99% similar to that of one found in Chinese pangolins. The 1% genetic difference could come from a lab on accident, but that would most likely be from the Wuhan lab

Did you, like, forget your own post? “On accident”?

Again, for the millionth time: it showing up in Wuhan in December means literally nothing to the origin of the virus if it, and I’ll be very clear here and agree in principle to literally everything else you’ve said, if it had spread from Yunnan province (in tropical Asia) to Italy by September or indeed May.

And, because you edited in the stuff about Yunnan apparently after I’d gone to sleep: Wuhan is in Heibei province in Central China. Not Yunnan. Any pangolins in any market even if present (and scientists tracking trafficked animals from Oxford say they weren’t), would have come from further south such as, yes, Yunnan. Or any of dozens of other places in tropical Asia, from where someone could also have in a single day traveled to Europe.

I simply cannot understand how an educated person would boil it down to this idea:

The virus is 99% similar to one in pangolins in Yunnan province and so if coming from a lab it must come from a lab in Wuhan, Heibei where they studied bats, and then it either spread from there in December 2019 to the people in Wuhan but also and traveled in time and space to Italy in September 2019, or spread from the lab at some undetermined time but did not affect anyone in China for 3 months, spreading instead to Italy and Spain and other places and eventually decided, like so many Chinese people, to return home for Chinese New Year back first to the exact city it came from, in Central China.

s_s , 9 months ago

Again, Wuhan is literally only linked to this story as the first place it was reported. No evidence at all places it in Wuhan first.

And this is how you can completely deny reality.

deft , 9 months ago

“signaling that it might have spread beyond China earlier than thought.”

they still suggest Chinese origin

Silverseren , 9 months ago

It came from the wild. They, along with Germany and other labs, were researching Sars related wild vectors and the possibility of natural selection causing a new outbreak.

I find it reasonable to believe a biosafety incident at the Wuhan lab infected several of the lab researchers and that led to the pandemic.

But that's the extent of where things go. Conspiracies about bioweapons are idiotic.

AfricanExpansionist , 9 months ago (edited 9 months ago)

I remembered reading early on that someone sold a carcass from the lab to a wet market. I think that’s probably Western propaganda and I have no idea whether that’s true.

However, in China there were posters in every restaurant saying to avoid eating such meats. They started to appear in the first half of 2020. I saw them in Shanghai, Ningbo, and Hangzhou.

Maybe the government just saw it as a useful opportunity to steer the public toward factory-produced meats that fall under the “safe umbrella” of capitalism. Either one is interesting to think about

Chetzemoka , 9 months ago

I thought this as well (massive safety events being a pretty normal thing, after all) until last year when the wet market swab data was finally analyzed. (After apparently being leaked? Accidentally? Accidentally on purpose?)

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abp8715

“Both early lineages of SARS-CoV-2 were geographically associated with the market”