Chinese Virologist post report claiming virus made in Wuhan lab

The initial reporting wasn't false but a reaction to the far right lobbing false theories that China manufactured it as a weapon to destroy the world. If you go back and read the articles it never stated that it could not have leaked from a lab, but rather spoke to how very unlikely it is manmade - which is still the case. The article and the other one I posted speaks to many of the points you have been arguing here - from gain of function research to the DNA sequencing and demonstrates the flaws in those arguments. It's a lot of work to go through point by point at 2am in the morning when I have work tomorrow, but I read your arguments and articles, so take a look at these with an open mind.

And while I never suggested you are a Trump supporter, I still think you are buying into propaganda. I don't say that to insult you but rather express the reality that there is a movement to politicize all this - that's the vested interest. The vested interest is to be able to blame the Chinese gov't for creating this. Scientists don't have vested interests - not to the extent politicians do.

 

The NYT, WaPo, Vox and others were flat out calling it a conspiracy theory. Then got caught making stealth edits to some of those articles.

There are vested interests on all sides. I worked in academia for years. It’s very political. I worked for a center that received all its funding from soft money grants much like EchoHealth. That’s even more political because you need to have the right friends and kiss the right ass to get funding.

Peter Daszak, the guy who started the media ball rolling the wrong direction was making $400,000 a year on top of working closely with Wuhan and getting all his funding from government sources.

 

Y’all might be interested in today’s episode of fresh air and the author of a new Vanity Fair article on lab leak possibilities— fascinating.

EDIT: Sorry (not sorry) if already posted. Worth a careful read, IMHO.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/202...inside-the-fight-to-uncover-covid-19s-origins

One big take home: the "lab leak" theory does not have to mean an engineered virus. It could be a virus (like the one discovered in a Chinese mine in 2013) that escaped lax protocols in the Wuhan lab in 2019.

Another big takehome: the scientists writing their Lancet article dismissing all lab leak talk as "conspiracy theory" were premature. We did not know enough to say that. But they were just trusting well-known collaborators in China. And sure, they may have been good scientists over there, but good scientists make mistakes too, and China would never let them speak freely and honestly about the situation, based on all evidence of how they run things.

 

Yes you do have vested interests in science, but most research isn't done with a vested interest but for discovery and advancing knowledge, not a specific account. Disproving a hypothesis can be just as big and noteworthy for a scientist as proving it. Scientists are a community and peer review is critical - that process is there to ensure that the science itself is apolitical. Academia is political but again, the actual research specific to scientific study is pretty clean unless it is funded by business.

As for the media outlets you quoted - none of them called the lab leak theory a conspiracy theory - they called the effort by some to push the idea that the virus was manufactured a conspiracy theory. While that may not seem to be different to you, it is from a factual standpoint.

We are in a unique situation where the investigation to the origin of the virus has been politicized by one side which wishes to say that China is responsible for political reasons. So its skewing the conversation and focus.

Reality is that the lab leak avenue is still very unlikely and the virus probably has a natural origin. A lot of the discussion you have given by the perfection of the site and the cleavage site has been debunked because scientists have said that isn't where anyone would logically choose to make the attachment site and not in that way which leads credence to the natural origin route.

There's far more solid evidence that it came naturally then through development in a petri dish or in animals. I thank you for pushing me to look deeper into the matter, but the deeper I looked, the less likely the lab origin makes sense. It still can't be ruled out but it's just very unlikely.

Regardless, it's clear that these labs - in China and around the world - need to be buffed up. There needs to be a lot more transparency around what they are doing, but politicians need to stay out of this to a large degree. We can't hamper scientists from doing critical research needed to stop a devastating pandemic that is far worse that COVID. We have to stay ahead of the next one. We need to develop that understanding so we can prepare.

 

There … d&d

“With disreputable wing nuts on one side of them and scornful experts on the other, the DRASTIC researchers often felt as if they were on their own in the wilderness, working on the world’s most urgent mystery. They weren’t alone. But investigators inside the U.S. government asking similar questions were operating in an environment that was as politicized and hostile to open inquiry as any Twitter echo chamber. When Trump himself floated the lab-leak hypothesis last April, his divisiveness and lack of credibility made things more, not less, challenging for those seeking the truth.

“The DRASTIC people are doing better research than the U.S. government,” says David Asher, a former senior investigator under contract to the State Department.”

 

Joking aside... that's a great article and well worth the read.

 

"lab leak" could also mean that the WIV researcher picked up the virus in the wet market, spread it in the WIV lab, and then those infected leaked the virus from the lab, when they went home to their families.

 

yeah, true, and it could also mean an incontinent researcher.

 

A leak is a leak is a leak.

 

That is what makes it worse. You already had their top researchers bragging in interviews about flaunting safety protocols foreign researchers taught them, and now these cowboys are shown to be liars who have taken down whatever gullible rube trusts them.

The other point in principle is that it doesnt matter if American researchers are "lied to" because the entire research industry should be taken to task over these leaks. Maybe if they were all locked in literal ivory towers, then they can eat their own mistakes without killing everyone else.

It's ****ing maddening to see this "whatever it takes" attitude by Chinese nationals to jumpstart their industries...through outright stealing, cheating, cutting corners, and lying. The inferiority complex is thick to justify their means and now everyone has to pay for it.

 

the Chinese defector story is gaining ground

 

Politics both in the US and the PRC have likely made it difficult to ever look at this objectively.

In the US, Trump and many were insisting on calling this "The China Virus" and doing everything they could to blame the PRC to distract from the chaotic and piss poor response the US had. Further Trump and others frequently conflated that the virus was deliberately created with a lab leak that greatly muddied the issue. While there is compelling evidence that this could be a lab leak there is no rational evidence that the PRC deliberately engineered this virus as an attempt to take Trump.

On the PRC side their penchant for secrecy and intolerance for questioning the CCP caused them to coverup evidence, silence their own doctors and scientists and the buy off international agencies. The lack of accountability and loyalty to the party of local Hubei officials did a lot of damage in the early days of the pandemic. Their actions very well might've even covered up evidence showing a zoonotic source. On top of that the PRC also peddled their own conspiracy theory that the virus was created by the CIA to make the PRC look bad.

We might never know what is the real source of the virus because of politics driven by distrust and the confirmation bias.

 

We still don't know or have a consensus where the 1918 flu, aka the Spanish flu, pandemic originated from. It took some 20 years later to figure out it was from a virus and that it did not originate from Spain.

On the other hand, HIV origin was traced back to the late 90s, with the first case likely thought to be around the 1920s, originated from the Congo. Trace back origin from 70+ years ago.

I think good chances we will eventually find out with modern record (even if hidden) and ability, but might be years later.

Whatever the case, there were many conspiracy theories around HIV (created the US gov - thx Russia is one of them) that people still believe in today. Probably the same with covid19.

 

Ethics aren't China's priority but nor are they absolute monsters. The original strain of Covid-19 was probably funded via worldwide clientele to possess to serve their respective egos. There might actually be other viral merchandise in multiple labs not only in China but around the world. It's all about the money and protecting the identities of clientele at all costs. Back in the 70s-90s Nike and Mattel used this exploit to manufacture their goods because they knew China would not incur on human rights within labor practices as long as they provided jobs and put them on the path to becoming a developed country.

 

I agree in principle. It's also very important to distinguish the bolded because people are arguing over different details. The takedown Trump people feel vindicated just by half of the theory being possible, while others have no understanding why China would do that kind of research in the first place other than out of malice.

The other political part is the lancet paper and the media's reaction to it. You might view it as a simple mistake but it's clear the scientists who signed the document lent their credibility to a matter they didn't do their due diligence on (at best). At worst, they possibly engaged in a cover up.

Twitter and Co were within their rights to block conspiracy theories about China breaking up Trump and Putie's bromance, but it seemed like it was easier to implement a filter on "lab leak".

That's a swift and powerful response that also deserves scrutiny over 1) our (dis)trust of sources of truth and 2) how those sources of truth broadcast or silence the information passed along to them

It's similar to how some videos can be removed not by their actual offensive content, but a simple DCMA takedown request. It's a whole new ballgame and the less we know how it works, the more troublesome it gets for free speech.

 

Very good oped that goes into current events, history and what to consider for the future.

Recommend reading by all that’s interested in the origin.

Note: no politic, no blaming, just opinions based on known facts.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/25/opinion/coronavirus-lab.html

 

The Last—And Only—Foreign Scientist in the Wuhan Lab Speaks Out

Danielle Anderson was working in what has become the world’s most notorious laboratory just weeks before the first known cases of Covid-19 emerged in central China. Yet, the Australian virologist still wonders what she missed.

An expert in bat-borne viruses, Anderson is the only foreign scientist to have undertaken research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s BSL-4 lab, the first in mainland China equipped to handle the planet’s deadliest pathogens. Her most recent stint ended in November 2019, giving Anderson an insider’s perspective on a place that’s become a flashpoint in the search for what caused the worst pandemic in a century.

...