Coronavirus and You - Page 693

On June 17 2023 17:33 maybenexttime wrote:
Seriously, stop with the gaslighting. I had zero issues accessing mainstream media discussing various hypotheses of the virus's origins here in Europe. And if you get your news from a Facebook feed, I think you've got a bigger issue, tbh.

And, btw, FoxNews is not a credible news source. GTFO with that, lol.

On June 17 2023 21:26 maybenexttime wrote:
You gave one example: Facebook. That hardly qualifies as a widespread campaign to suppress anything. Also what was being suppressed, according to your source, were claims of the virus being manufactured or man-made. That claim is hardly different from the bio-weapon claim. It differs only in the motive. Like I said, at the time there was no evidence to support that. The scientific consensus was that the virus seemed to have had a natural origin. I am not qualified to say whether it was justified.

Meanwhile, if you google "covid leak laboratory wuhan" and set the time frame to the first six months of the pandemic, you'll find dozens of articles from reputable sources discussing the hypothesis in earnest:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/14/state-department-cables-warned-safety-issues-wuhan-lab-studying-bat-coronaviruses/
https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2020/05/02/the-pieces-of-the-puzzle-of-covid-19s-origin-are-coming-to-light
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackbrewster/2020/05/10/a-timeline-of-the-covid-19-wuhan-lab-origin-theory/
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-52318539
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/04/five-eyes-network-contradicts-theory-covid-19-leaked-from-lab
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/15/politics/us-intelligence-virus-started-chinese-lab/index.html
https://newsweek.com/controversial-wuhan-lab-experiments-that-may-have-started-coronavirus-pandemic-1500503
https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/coronavirus-wasnt-created-in-lab-no-signs-genetic-engineering-1.5508735
https://www.ft.com/content/255a3524-0459-4724-a92a-58268ab627e2
https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-bats-expert-says-her-wuhan-lab-wasnt-source-of-new-coronavirus-11587463204
https://abc.net.au/news/2020-04-18/coronavirus-misinformation-origin-theory-donald-trump-wuhan-lab/12158774

That sure does look like suppression...

I won't comment on Jon Stewart. I don't know anything about him aside from the fact that he exists. I have no idea what claims he was making at the time, whether he was actually suppressed in any way or how credible he is.

Both The New York Times and The Washington Post, for example, accused Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) of spreading a “conspiracy theory” when he called for more investigation of the lab leak theory. An NPR report said there was “virtually no chance” the thesis was correct. The fact-checking website PolitiFact called the idea that the virus was man-made a “debunked conspiracy theory” — a finding that it has recently retracted.

professor Robert Garry, said he could see no "plausible natural scenario" for key amino acids and nucleotides to have been inserted into a bat virus

Mike Farzan (dubbed the "discoverer of SARS receptor" and a professor of immunology at Scripps Research) found a key aspect of the virus "highly unlikely" to have developed outside a lab.

The unusual features of the virus make up a really small part of the genome (<0.1%) so one has to look really closely at all the sequences to see that some of the features (potentially) look engineered,” Andersen said in an email to Fauci on Jan. 31, 2020. Andersen added that he and University of Sydney virologist and evolutionary biologist Edward Holmes, plus a handful of other top scientists with whom Fauci was on a first-name basis, “all find the genome inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory.

In one email to Fauci, Collins, and another NIH official, Farrar wrote, “On a spectrum if 0 is nature and 100 is release—I am honestly at 50!”

Farrar reported that Farzan was “70:30” or “60:40” in favor of an “accidental-release” explanation and that “Bob” — an apparent reference to Robert Garry — was also surprised by the presence of a furin cleavage site in this virus. Farrar quoted Bob saying: “I just can’t figure out how this gets accomplished in nature. … it’s stunning.”

But in another email from the same day referenced in the lawmakers' letter, Ron Fouchier, the deputy head of the Erasmus MC Department of Viroscience, seemed to embrace the theory that the virus occurred naturally and warned that lab leak discussions could "do unnecessary harm to science in general and science in China in particular."

“I agree that we really cannot take Ron’s suggestion about waiting,” Fauci wrote on February 2. “Like all of us, I do not know how this evolved, but given the concerns of so many people and the threat of further distortions on social media, it is essential that we move quickly.”

On June 18 2023 05:45 maybenexttime wrote:
@BJ

No, all those articles looked critically at the facts known at the time, consulted relevant experts and did or did not draw some conclusions. You're betting on people not checking those articles. We can analyse each one of them one by one if that's your kink.

I thoroughly debunked your accusations of my alleged rewriting of history. If you insist on making yourself look like a clown, be my guest. ;-)

"Scientists from multiple countries have published and analysed genomes of the causative agent, SARS-CoV-2, and they overwhelmingly conclude that this coronavirus originated in wildlife, as have so many other emerging pathogens.

"Conspiracy theories do nothing but create fear, rumours, and prejudice that jeopardise our global collaboration in the fight against this virus."

On June 18 2023 07:09 Mikau wrote:
How the fuck are people conflating "experts looked at the available evidence at the time and concluded the lab leak theory was unlikely" with censorship and suppressing?

These same people then post links from all kinds of main stream media sources talking about the lab leak theory, as if a bunch of main stream sources talking about something is proof that that thing is being suppressed and censored?

I swear, with how often conservatives claim their ideas are being censored and suppressed you would expect you could go anywhere without constantly being told about said conservative ideas.

On June 18 2023 05:45 Sadist wrote:
I think you are conflating "man made" and lab leak.

Is there any evidence it was a man made virus? If a virus was found in the wild but through fuckups at the lab in handling it became more wide spread, would that not be different than it being man made? Man made has a more nefarious connotation.


I think its an important difference.

A wild virus getting loose at a lab is pretty plausible. A man made virus getting loose at a lab is possible but would need some pretty clear evidence correct?

On June 18 2023 06:12 Elroi wrote:

What? I just read two of your sources randomly and they both treated the lab leak hypothesis as Trump's unfounded conspiracy theory. Just look at the last one: "Coronavirus may have come from a Chinese lab, if you believe Donald Trump — but experts disagree"

On June 18 2023 05:45 maybenexttime wrote:
@BJ

No, all those articles looked critically at the facts known at the time, consulted relevant experts and did or did not draw some conclusions. You're betting on people not checking those articles. We can analyse each one of them one by one if that's your kink.

I thoroughly debunked your accusations of my alleged rewriting of history. If you insist on making yourself look like a clown, be my guest. ;-)