The Scientists and Spies Who Questioned Covid’s Origins

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

39 minutes ago, Oliver Holzerfilled said:

 

The Cell paper is contested.  Given the stakes it would be prudent to wait on a response from the journal before accepting the authors “beyond reasonable doubt” conclusion.

 

https://biosafetynow.substack.com/p/crits-christoph-et-al-2024-retraction

 

 

Oh ya... really great folks behind BiosafetyNow:

 

‘Lab-leak’ proponents at Rutgers accused of defaming and intimidating COVID-19 origin researchers

 

Letter by 12 COVID-19 scientists says social media attacks violate university policy and could incite physical harm

 

"Fraudsters. Liars. Perjurers. Felons. Grifters. Stooges. Imbeciles. Murderers. When it comes to describing scientists whose peer-reviewed studies suggest the COVID-19 virus made a natural jump from animals to humans, molecular biologist Richard Ebright and microbiologist Bryce Nickels have used some very harsh language. On X (formerly Twitter), where the two scientists from Rutgers University are a constant presence, they have even compared fellow researchers to Nazi war criminals and the genocidal Cambodian dictator Pol Pot.

 

But now, their targets have had enough. A dozen scientists filed a formal complaint with Rutgers yesterday alleging that the two faculty members have violated the university’s policies on free expression by posting “provably false” comments that are often defamatory, and that some of their actions could even threaten scientists’ safety.

 

“It’s just a very clear daily harassment campaign directed at people that they disagree with. And I don’t think that’s right,” says letter organizer Kristian Andersen, an evolutionary biologist at Scripps Research who has co-authored papers in Science that link the origin of the pandemic to wildlife sold at a market in Wuhan, China. He and his colleagues also worry Ebright and Nickels are “engaging with the more extreme right,” including one person who has joked about executing some researchers."

 

(more)

 

https://www.science.org/content/article/lab-leak-proponents-rutgers-accused-defaming-and-intimidating-covid-19-origin

 

PS - I see nothing on the Cell journal webpage for the article or elsewhere that indicates there's anything afoot to remove or otherwise retract the subject study... notwithstanding the opinions of the two guys behind BioSafetyNow.

 

 

[placnx]

5 hours ago, Oliver Holzerfilled said:

It's hard to imagine a disaster other than the origin of the coronovirus that the Chinese or USA governments would be more motivated to cover up at all costs.  As some have pointed out, if the origin is from a Chinese lab and if the US were directly involved, such as providing virus samples, Chinese cooperation is likely not needed to reach a conclusion.

Your idea that the US government preferred the zoonotic theory is interesting. It's true that the Wuhan Institute got NIH grants which went through Daszak - ECOHealth Alliance, who organized the Lancet article to downplay the lab hypothesis. That the US government may claim that they did not fund dangerous gain-of-function research does not preclude the possibility that there was parallel military research at the Wuhan lab on virus collected from a quarry in Yunnan where around six workers died after contracting Covid from the bats there.

 

Sorry, my links are marooned on a disk drive from a old computer. I'll ask the friend, microbiologist who sent me a link to an excellent article on the lab leak theory, to send again, if he can.

 

[SunnyinBangrak]

5 hours ago, stevenl said:

From the beginning both theories were seen as possible. The premises of the article is wrong, making the whole article irrelevant.

Absolutely false. Anyone suggesting it came from a lab was banned from participating in discussion. I know you remember this. You dont get to reinvent history.

[stevenl]

5 hours ago, roquefort said:

But those who supported the lab leak theory, including the FBI as the article point out, were ignored, censored by the media and finally suppressed from any debate on the issue. The only acceptable narrative was the one put forward by Fauci and the US government.

 

That is the premise of the article, so why exactly is is it irrelevant?

It's simply not true.

[stevenl]

58 minutes ago, SunnyinBangrak said:

Absolutely false. Anyone suggesting it came from a lab was banned from participating in discussion. I know you remember this. You dont get to reinvent history.

Nonsense.

[ukrules]

3 hours ago, koolkarl said:

I do believe the US knows the exact origin of kung flu but for some strange reason is protecting China.  Perhaps if they

released the truth, the entire world would revolt against China in every way imaginable. 

 

Sir Richard Deerlove, the former head of MI6 came right out with his take on the event as it was just ramping up back in June / July 2016

 

First they laughed at him - yes, the former head of MI6 was mocked.

They're not laughing now.
 

Source - 100s of these but many behind paywalls : https://unherd.com/newsroom/sir-richard-dearlove-british-elites-are-chinas-useful-idiots/

 

 

[Bkk Brian]

29 minutes ago, stevenl said:

It's simply not true.

Not read the article then, it is true

[placnx]

2 hours ago, placnx said:

Your idea that the US government preferred the zoonotic theory is interesting. It's true that the Wuhan Institute got NIH grants which went through Daszak - ECOHealth Alliance, who organized the Lancet article to downplay the lab hypothesis. That the US government may claim that they did not fund dangerous gain-of-function research does not preclude the possibility that there was parallel military research at the Wuhan lab on virus collected from a quarry in Yunnan where around six workers died after contracting Covid from the bats there.

 

Sorry, my links are marooned on a disk drive from a old computer. I'll ask the friend, microbiologist who sent me a link to an excellent article on the lab leak theory, to send again, if he can.

 

I have found one of the best anaylses bringing together the information supporting the lab leak hypothesis:

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/coronavirus-lab-escape-theory.html

This is a long but very worthwhile read. Date: January 4, 2021.

[placnx]

2 hours ago, candide said:

Actually, talking about lab-leaked is obscuring the real issue, which is natural evolution.ution vs created by researchers.

-  natural evolution, whether from the Wuhan market or leaked from the samples collected by the lab. It seems to be currently the dominant scientific explanation.

-  created by researchers in a lab (then leaked). This is currently not the dominant scientific explanation.

When you say "created", that's confusing. The discussion should be about Coronaviruses collected (as the Wuhan lab was known to be doing) and then modified using technology that they got from Baric in Atlanta.

 

Early on somebody calculated that to go from the closest existing (natural) virus to the original Covid strain should have taken 30 years, based on the number of changes to the structure from the natural sample. Perhaps the Wuhan lab possessed other natural Coronaviruses closer to Covid and unknown to the scientific community. Just a supposition.

[placnx]

3 hours ago, freedomnow said:

More like US govt. invested by proxy organisation in the level 4 lab to research novel coronavirus in China.

I believe that it was the French who set up the Level 4 lab at the Wuhan Institute. However, the Bat Woman was usually using Level 2 or sometimes Level 3 facilities. This helps explain how a leak could have occured. Some American researchers visiting in 2018 were appalled by the sloppiness in the lab.

[Elkski]

One thing that always has me leaning towards the lab leak from the very early days was that the DNA database that they were working on was destroyed.    Other lab mistakes at that lab tell us they were being careless.   The fact USA sent money for gain of function  work is also a good reason for a cover-up.   If it had started in USA we would be paying back the world.   So I think they thought it best to do this research outside the country.   I had one of the first Is citizen cases of covid.   I flew through Shanghai Dec 26 th 2019 and was deathly sick for 5 days.  I posted about it at the time on here.  So when I returned to USA late Jan I was glued to the Twitter posts with all the leading information.  It leaked from that lab!  

[KhunLA]

9 hours ago, stevenl said:

From the beginning both theories were seen as possible. The premises of the article is wrong, making the whole article irrelevant.

Only an idiot would believe the bat soup, or animal to human transfer.  Here's a post of mine, elsewhere, over 4 yrs ago ... Sept 2020

 

 

 

[stevenl]

1 minute ago, KhunLA said:

Only an idiot would believe the bat soup, or animal to human transfer.  Here's a post of mine, elsewhere, over 4 yrs ago ... Sept 2020

 

 

 

Scientists ate still not clear about this, but apparently in LA all has been clear for many years already.

[bendejo]

This stuff in this thread certainly bears a resemblance to discussions of the origins of AIDS in the 1980s.

 

[Hawaiian]

16 hours ago, AndreasHG said:

 

Cover-ups in open, democratic societies simply don't work. In the event of an incident, the simple implementation of follow-up, corrective and prevention measures, involving tents of people, playing different roles within an organization, is almost impossible to hide and a clear sign that something went wrong.

 

Cover-ups only work under totalitarian regimes, or in the sick minds of conspiracy theorists and in Hollywood movies, which spare no effort to undermine Americans' trust in national institutions.

 

Those who don't understand this do not understand the true nature of open, democratic societies, vs totalitarian ones. And very likely don't deserve to live as free men and women in an open society. 

 

Well said.

[Hawaiian]

15 hours ago, stevenl said:

From the beginning both theories were seen as possible. The premises of the article is wrong, making the whole article irrelevant.

Sorry, your broom isn't big enough.  Nice try.

[RT555]

The USA had declared back in the 1970's that there is going to be too many people in the world.....This COVID. was just an exercise.....wait until the next epidemic......it will kill 18% of the worlds population.

[Hawaiian]

12 hours ago, placnx said:

I have found one of the best anaylses bringing together the information supporting the lab leak hypothesis:

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/coronavirus-lab-escape-theory.html

This is a long but very worthwhile read. Date: January 4, 2021.

Yes, quite long, but interesting.  One sentence in particular caught my attention.  "Over the past few decades, scientists have developed ingenious methods of evolution acceleration and recombination....into moving quickly from one species of animal to another...."

And the search goes on, albeit in a supposedly safer way.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-11-21/virus-hunters-search-for-new-forms-that-could-turn-into-pandemic

[Yagoda]

If any government tells you something, question it.

 

If any government tells you to beleive something, its not true.

 

 

[Hervey Bay]

The Chinese are very sensitive about this, but 'methinks they do protest too much'. When Australia's former Prime Minister called for an enquiry into COVID origins, the Chinese government immediately cancelled BILLIONS of dollars in contracts to buy our produce. The last of these have only just been reinstated.

[Will B Good]

2 minutes ago, Hervey Bay said:

The Chinese are very sensitive about this, but 'methinks they do protest too much'. When Australia's former Prime Minister called for an enquiry into COVID origins, the Chinese government immediately cancelled BILLIONS of dollars in contracts to buy our produce. The last of these have only just been reinstated.

 

'they do protest too much methinks'......soz...daughter is (a) manager of the Globe and would berate me if I let that pass.

[Enzian]

It doesn't matter which one it was, what matters, and what matters for the world ongoing, is that the Chinese did not and do not cooperate. Even if they did, it might not answer the question, which reinforces the point that it doesn't matter; we are still going to try to prepare for both. But there would be some satisfaction if a smoking gun were to one day appear.