Coronavirus Lab-Leak Theory Gets Another Look

[xylophone]

1 minute ago, tgw said:

the lab leak theory has huge implications:
- a lab leak could mean Chinese responsibility for damages

And the Congo for HIV, the Middle East (Jordan it is believed) for MERS and so on........and perhaps the US for what was called the Spanish Flu???

 

Won't happen.

[tgw]

2 minutes ago, Jeffr2 said:

I've yet to read about this. Except in click bait articles. Sure, they can't rule out the lab leak option. But a vast majority of credible scientists say it came from nature.

 

the do some reading before repeating the opinion of "credible scientists".
I really don't like the label "credible scientists" - I think only the opinion of virologists counts in this case.

[tgw]

3 minutes ago, xylophone said:

And the Congo for HIV, the Middle East (Jordan it is believed) for MERS and so on........and perhaps the US for what was called the Spanish Flu???

 

Won't happen.

 

I don't think Congo was experimenting on HIV in a lab...

[xylophone]

3 minutes ago, tgw said:

 

I don't think Congo was experimenting on HIV in a lab...

But what were the US soldiers doing with livestock!!

 

Seriously if it is just looking for someone to blame and to get damages, then not likely to happen. If so how culpable would the countries be (including the US) which helped fund the research??

 

And on this note, Russia only paid out a small amount of compensation for their reactor meltdown.

[tgw]

interesting article:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/wuhan-lab-leak-question-chinese-mine-covid-pandemic-11621871125

 

especially:

Quote

Last year, 27 scientists signed an open letter condemning “conspiracy theories” suggesting that Covid-19 didn’t have a natural origin. Now, three of them since contacted by the Journal say that on further reflection a laboratory accident is plausible enough to merit consideration. Others continue to deem it too unlikely to justify investigation.

 

 

[tgw]

2 minutes ago, xylophone said:

But what were the US soldiers doing with livestock!!

 

Seriously if it is just looking for someone to blame and to get damages, then not likely to happen. If so how culpable would the countries be (including the US) which helped fund the research??

 

And on this note, Russia only paid out a small amount of compensation for their reactor meltdown.

 

obviously, it's only about gaining political advantage, not about any real payouts.

 

imagine China was found responsible, anything they would say in the close future would just be dismissed as lies and carelessness.

[WaveHunter]

25 minutes ago, Jeffr2 said:

I've yet to read about this. Except in click bait articles. Sure, they can't rule out the lab leak option. But a vast majority of credible scientists say it came from nature.

Objective people, more concerned with finding the truth than supporting some sort of political agenda don't just blindly dismiss compelling scientific evidence, defiantly calling it conspiracy theory or clickbait news, when the true origin of the virus can not yet even be determined with absolute certainty.

 

To be unwilling to judge all of the evidence before reaching a conclusion is not only incredibly disingenuous, but about as illogical as sticking your head in the sand in order to avoid reality.

Edited June 19, 2021 by WaveHunter

[tgw]

Quote

Many scientists are eager to examine the WIV’s once publicly available database of some 22,000 samples and virus sequences, including 15,000 from bats. The database was taken offline in September 2019.

still from https://www.wsj.com/articles/wuhan-lab-leak-question-chinese-mine-covid-pandemic-11621871125

 

this is just WOW

 

[Harry Om]

57 minutes ago, Jeffr2 said:

I've yet to read about this. Except in click bait articles. Sure, they can't rule out the lab leak option. But a vast majority of credible scientists say it came from nature.

 

"I've yet to read about it" isn't much of an argument.

 

Where are these vast majority of credible scientists? China? Links please.

[tgw]

another thing I was thinking about is that in the event of a lab leak, it might not have originated from Dr. Shi's lab.

 

anyway, working on coronaviruses does not require biosafety level 4.

 

someone had the same idea:

https://gillesdemaneuf.medium.com/a-count-of-bsl-3-labs-in-china-664f2b354276

 

Quote

We were able to determine that at least 112 individual BSL-3 were operating in China as of August 2020, across 62 lab-complexes (excluding mobile laboratories).

 

if we accept Wuhan as the origin, well, there are 13 labs of BSL-3 in Wuhan that do not belong to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

 

some of these were also working on coronaviruses, especially the Wuhan University Medial College, who is almost as active as the WIV in publishing papers about coronaviruses

 

 

Edited June 19, 2021 by tgw

[Harry Om]

"Chan said there had been trepidation among some scientists about publicly discussing the lab leak hypothesis for fear that their words could be misconstrued or used to support racist rhetoric about how the coronavirus emerged.

 

At the time, it was scarier to be associated with Trump and to become a tool for racists, so people didn't want to publicly call for an investigation into lab origins," she said.

 

Now, more scientists are comfortable confronting the gamut of plausible theories — particularly given China's opacity about the topic — although many still caution that entertaining the idea of a lab leak requires clear scientific proof, which hasn't materialized."

 

https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/lab-leak-theory-science-scientists-rcna1191

[thaibeachlovers]

1 hour ago, Jeffr2 said:

According to credible scientists, it came from nature. This is a field day for conspiracy theorists.

Everything comes from nature, but if the genetic structure of the virus has been modified that could  have happened in a lab.

Given it's China we may never know the truth, but I'd love to know why the US was funding study of potentially lethal viruses in a Chinese lab, when they are hardly a friendly power.

 

Seems to me that there are a lot of apologists for China out there.

[thaibeachlovers]

29 minutes ago, Harry Om said:

"Chan said there had been trepidation among some scientists about publicly discussing the lab leak hypothesis for fear that their words could be misconstrued or used to support racist rhetoric about how the coronavirus emerged.

 

At the time, it was scarier to be associated with Trump and to become a tool for racists, so people didn't want to publicly call for an investigation into lab origins," she said.

 

Now, more scientists are comfortable confronting the gamut of plausible theories — particularly given China's opacity about the topic — although many still caution that entertaining the idea of a lab leak requires clear scientific proof, which hasn't materialized."

 

https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/lab-leak-theory-science-scientists-rcna1191

Neither has any clear scientific proof materialized to say that it came from animals. Till such proof is found it is hardly credible to be dismissing one or the other theory out of hand.

[Rimmer]

Youtube video from an unproved source has been removed

[Jeffr2]

1 hour ago, tgw said:

 

the do some reading before repeating the opinion of "credible scientists".
I really don't like the label "credible scientists" - I think only the opinion of virologists counts in this case.

One of hundreds of articles.  Yes, the lab leak needs to be ruled out.  But so far, it's not the source credible scientists agree on.  I use credible because there are many dubious articles out there from very dubious "scientists". 

 

This is also fueled by politics.  Those on the right are using it to bash China and fuel their racism.  It doesn't help.

 

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01529-3

 

Most scientists say SARS-CoV-2 probably has a natural origin, and was transmitted from an animal to humans. However, a lab leak has not been ruled out, and many are calling for a deeper investigation into the hypothesis that the virus emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), located in the Chinese city where the first COVID-19 cases were reported.

 

Scientists don’t have enough evidence about the origins of SARS-CoV-2 to rule out the lab-leak hypothesis, or to prove the alternative — that the virus has a natural origin. Many infectious-disease researchers agree that the most probable scenario is that the virus evolved naturally and spread from a bat either directly to a person or through an intermediate animal. Most emerging infectious diseases begin with a spillover from nature, as was seen with HIV, influenza epidemics, Ebola outbreaks and the coronaviruses that caused the SARS epidemic beginning in 2002 and the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) outbreak beginning in 2012.

[Jeffr2]

1 hour ago, WaveHunter said:

Objective people, more concerned with finding the truth than supporting some sort of political agenda don't just blindly dismiss compelling scientific evidence, defiantly calling it conspiracy theory or clickbait news, when the true origin of the virus can not yet even be determined with absolute certainty.

 

To be unwilling to judge all of the evidence before reaching a conclusion is not only incredibly disingenuous, but about as illogical as sticking your head in the sand in order to avoid reality.

The compelling scientific evidence is pointing towards nature.  Yes, the lab leak needs to be ruled out.  But it's not at the top of the list of reasons for this outbreak.

 

As I said before, many conspiracy theorists are jumping on this big time.  For a variety of reasons.  One of them is political.

[WaveHunter]

1 hour ago, Harry Om said:

 

"I've yet to read about it" isn't much of an argument.

 

Where are these vast majority of credible scientists? China? Links please.

The "vast majority" of scientists who claim a natural origin for the virus are actually a vocal minority of scientists motivated by a hidden but very real political agenda.

 

Many of them who have claimed that the lab leak hypothesis is nothing but a conspiracy theory are the same ones who inadvertently allowed indirect NIH funding to the Wuhan Lab; funds that ended up being used for prohibited Gain-of-Function Research.

 

Is it any surprise that those scientists would be the loudest to deny the lab leak hypotheses?  They are simply scared of being exposed for their irresponsible actions of indirectly allowing GoF research at the Wuhan Lab to be funded with US dollars.

 

If it turns out that the lab leak theory were proven true that would mean that their actions were in part responsible for the deaths of over 5 million people around the world and a cost to world economies of untold trillions of dollars. 

 

I'd say that is a overwhelmingly strong incentive to shout down the possibility of a lab leak in Wuhan as nothing more than a conspiracy theory.

Edited June 19, 2021 by WaveHunter

[xylophone]

Many posts, pages and possibly years from now we probably still won't know the source, so I am bowing out of this as it has become a circular argument with seemingly no end in sight.

 

As far as I'm concerned, if it is from nature then more research needs to done to ensure it doesn't happen again, and if its from a Lab leak, then more research needs to be done to make sure it doesn't happen again!

[tgw]

1 hour ago, Jeffr2 said:

The compelling scientific evidence is pointing towards nature.  Yes, the lab leak needs to be ruled out.  But it's not at the top of the list of reasons for this outbreak.

 

As I said before, many conspiracy theorists are jumping on this big time.  For a variety of reasons.  One of them is political.

 

what is that "compelling scientific evidence" ?

at the moment, I haven't read about any compelling evidence that it came from nature, quite the contrary.

 

I have read credible material that says:

- the virus doesn't come from WIV in Wuhan

- the virus didn't originate in the infamous Wuhan wet market

- MERS and SARS came from animals

 

but I have yet to find any material that is credible in either argumenting in favor of natural origin or ruling out a lab leak for COVID-19

maybe you can point me in the right direction.

I'm not looking for opinions such as "we believe the virus came from nature", I'm looking for facts. I presently don't know of any facts supporting the nature theory.

 

what I do know about are some facts making the theory that the virus came 100% from nature unlikely:

- the virus immediately started very contagious to humans

- the "crossover" animal has not yet been found, despite huge research

- the virus isn't good at infecting and/or replicating other organisms than humans except minks, but there were no minks in Wuhan and no outbreaks in farm animals were reported

- the details about the "furin cleavage site", of which virologists say it occurs naturally in only 5% of coronaviruses

- ... (there are more which I can't recall right now)

 

https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-people-or-nature-open-pandoras-box-at-wuhan/

Quote

Doubts about natural emergence. Natural emergence was the media’s preferred theory until around February 2021 and the visit by a World Health Organization (WHO) commission to China. The commission’s composition and access were heavily controlled by the Chinese authorities. Its members, who included the ubiquitous Daszak, kept asserting before, during, and after their visit that lab escape was extremely unlikely. But this was not quite the propaganda victory the Chinese authorities may have been hoping for. What became clear was that the Chinese had no evidence to offer the commission in support of the natural emergence theory.

This was surprising because both the SARS1 and MERS viruses had left copious traces in the environment. The intermediary host species of SARS1 was identified within four months of the epidemic’s outbreak, and the host of MERS within nine months. Yet some 15 months after the SARS2 pandemic began, and after a presumably intensive search, Chinese researchers had failed to find either the original bat population, or the intermediate species to which SARS2 might have jumped, or any serological evidence that any Chinese population, including that of Wuhan, had ever been exposed to the virus prior to December 2019. Natural emergence remained a conjecture which, however plausible to begin with, had gained not a shred of supporting evidence in over a year.

 

and

Quote

long history of viruses escaping from even the best run laboratories. The smallpox virus escaped three times from labs in England in the 1960’s and 1970’s, causing 80 cases and 3 deaths. Dangerous viruses have leaked out of labs almost every year since. Coming to more recent times, the SARS1 virus has proved a true escape artist, leaking from laboratories in Singapore, Taiwan, and no less than four times from the Chinese National Institute of Virology in Beijing.

 

Edited June 19, 2021 by tgw

[thaibeachlovers]

2 hours ago, Jeffr2 said:

The compelling scientific evidence is pointing towards nature.  Yes, the lab leak needs to be ruled out.  But it's not at the top of the list of reasons for this outbreak.

 

As I said before, many conspiracy theorists are jumping on this big time.  For a variety of reasons.  One of them is political.

In your opinion. The compelling evidence that I have seen makes a lab origin far more likely.

[thaibeachlovers]

1 hour ago, tgw said:

(there are more which I can't recall right now)

I'd add that apparently some workers from the lab were hospitalised for symptoms similar to corona at about the same time that the disease was spreading.

The Chinese government is being secretive about the actual symptoms which tends to confirm that there is some there, there.

Actually the Chinese government appears to be doing all it can to obstruct a proper investigation, but there are so many conflicting stories about that it's hard to know what is true and what is not. Having an open and transparent investigation by overseas scientists would be a good start to finding the facts.

[candide]

6 hours ago, tgw said:

 

the do some reading before repeating the opinion of "credible scientists".
I really don't like the label "credible scientists" - I think only the opinion of virologists counts in this case.

Yet, in the article you linked, the scientists with whom you agree are not virologists, while the one with whom you desagree is a virologist.

[tgw]

24 minutes ago, candide said:

Yet, in the article you linked, the scientists with whom you agree are not virologists, while the one with whom you desagree is a virologist.

 

fair point.

but from the articles I quoted, I only seek to extract the facts. facts remain, regardless of who mentions them.

 

what I want to say is, for the natural origin hypothesis, we have only opinions, but no facts in favor.

 

for the lab leak hypothesis, we have quite a few facts. I don't even talk about opinions here.

 

my request to anyone is to supply facts in favor of the natural origin theory.

or, I would also be happy with a virologist proponent of the natural origin theory to explain away the arguments that are in favor of the lab leak.

[Pattaya Spotter]

9 hours ago, thaibeachlovers said:

Exactly. Which is why I no longer trust any tv so called news. IMO it's more about ratings ( ie ad revenue ) than reporting facts.

I used to listen a lot to talk back radio, but since they started having a man and a woman hosting it's become more about chat and BS than exploring what is going on, so I gave that up too.

 

The only tv news that I give any credence to now is Al Jazira, but even they had overt bias during the Trump years. I look at Fox for the entertainment ( some of them still have a sense of humour ) and CNN to remind myself how bad media can be.

Actually, despite the obvious bias, RT can come up with some interesting documentaries.

Actually, I find the best news and documentaries on RT, DW, AJ, NHK, and ABC (Australian). It's sad that as an American, I don't find any of the major TV networks (or major newspapers) a credible source of information. 

Edited June 19, 2021 by Pattaya Spotter

[candide]

14 minutes ago, tgw said:

 

fair point.

but from the articles I quoted, I only seek to extract the facts. facts remain, regardless of who mentions them.

 

what I want to say is, for the natural origin hypothesis, we have only opinions, but no facts in favor.

 

for the lab leak hypothesis, we have quite a few facts. I don't even talk about opinions here.

 

my request to anyone is to supply facts in favor of the natural origin theory.

or, I would also be happy with a virologist proponent of the natural origin theory to explain away the arguments that are in favor of the lab leak.

I would argue the opposite. The lab leak hypothesis is based on unknown information, while the non-leak hypothesis is coherent with known facts. I will distinguish between the "pure leak" hypothesis (a "natural" Covid-19 had been collected and then leaked) and "GoF" hypothesis (a manufactured cv leaked).

Pure leak hypothesis:

As mentioned in one of the articles, there is no information that they had the Covid-19 in the lab, unlike other CVs. It doesn't prove they did not have it, but it is unknown that they had it.

GoF+ leak hypothesis

In order to apply GoF, you need to use a prior virus, and then make it evolve.  The closest known CV, sharing 96% of its genes, could not have been engineered to become CV-19 for two reasons. First, it is still too different to be a plausible candidate. Second, CV-19 is different from this CV in several different ways, while GoF research is applied to change only a limited number of functions.

 

It doesn't mean that these hypotheses may not be valid, but they are based on unknown information.

 

[tgw]

26 minutes ago, candide said:

I would argue the opposite. The lab leak hypothesis is based on unknown information, while the non-leak hypothesis is coherent with known facts. I will distinguish between the "pure leak" hypothesis (a "natural" Covid-19 had been collected and then leaked) and "GoF" hypothesis (a manufactured cv leaked).

Pure leak hypothesis:

As mentioned in one of the articles, there is no information that they had the Covid-19 in the lab, unlike other CVs. It doesn't prove they did not have it, but it is unknown that they had it.

GoF+ leak hypothesis

In order to apply GoF, you need to use a prior virus, and then make it evolve.  The closest known CV, sharing 96% of its genes, could not have been engineered to become CV-19 for two reasons. First, it is still too different to be a plausible candidate. Second, CV-19 is different from this CV in several different ways, while GoF research is applied to change only a limited number of functions.

 

It doesn't mean that these hypotheses may not be valid, but they are based on unknown information.

 

yes, you are correct on both counts, it is unknown information. but the information is available to Chinese authorities who chose to not disclose it.

 

also, you write about "the lab" as if there was only one. From what I read, GoF experiments aren't done in BSL-4 labs. BSL-3 is documented to have been used for that purpose at the WIV, other labs may have used BSL-2. There are 62 BSL-3 labs in China. In addition to its BSL-4 lab, the WIV has 4 BSL-3 labs. But in Wuhan alone, there are 13 more BSL-3 labs in addition to the 4 labs in the WIV.

question: were all samples and all research protocols of these other labs checked as well?

 

what we are certain of, is that China stonewalls.

why is China hiding information about that virus?

 

https://reporterre.net/Mounting-evidence-suggests-mink-farms-in-China-could-be-the-cradle-of-Covid-19-22020

Edited June 19, 2021 by tgw

[tgw]

quite remarquable, is that researchers could not figure out the way of transmission between mink farms in the Netherlands:

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/371/6525/172

 

[candide]

3 hours ago, tgw said:

what we are certain of, is that China stonewalls.

why is China hiding information about that virus?

It's possibility. However, China would never allow any foreign inquisitive investigation on any subject, it's not specific to this issue.

[thaibeachlovers]

14 hours ago, Pattaya Spotter said:

Actually, I find the best news and documentaries on RT, DW, AJ, NHK, and ABC (Australian). It's sad that as an American, I don't find any of the major TV networks (or major newspapers) a credible source of information. 

Far as I'm concerned, when a station is commercial, I can forget about unbiased reporting. It's all about ratings.

I can't get DW, NHK or ABC. ABC used to be on the Pattaya tv, but Abbott stopped that when he won the election by changing something, but I don't remember what it was. It had a lot of feminist programs, but there was one decent show where politicians had to answer questions from the public.

[Pattaya Spotter]

36 minutes ago, thaibeachlovers said:

Far as I'm concerned, when a station is commercial, I can forget about unbiased reporting. It's all about ratings.

I can't get DW, NHK or ABC. ABC used to be on the Pattaya tv, but Abbott stopped that when he won the election by changing something, but I don't remember what it was. It had a lot of feminist programs, but there was one decent show where politicians had to answer questions from the public.

Yes there is a lot of "woke" SJW BS on Australian Broadcasting but the Four Corners program has good foreign stories. All the foreign stations I listed have English language YouTube channels, where they put up a lot of their programs. AJ and DW (and France24) have live streaming of their news in English on YT at the top of every hour throughout the day. I find DW to be the most unbiased and "straight" of all the channels. The UK's Biased Broadcasting Corporation has sunk to such depths that it doesn't even make the list.

Edited June 20, 2021 by Pattaya Spotter