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Covid-19 Outbreak of new SARS-like coronavirus (Covid-19)

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birdup.snaildown said:
@JessFR

It's like a game of whack-a-mole. They just keep popping up.



Indeed. They make statements like YOU JUST HAVE TO LOOK AT THE DATA, then you show them data and they totally ignore it.

COVID has finally convinced me that there is no point trying to change anybody's mind. This is depressing for me, because once upon a time I was an idealistic hippy that wanted to change the world. Now, I realize there is no point... but there's always a silver lining. After all the frustration I have endured wasting my time trying in vain to convince people, it is comforting (in the same way I imagine death is comforting) to finally give up.

Like I said, there is either a sensible explanation for Victoria or there isn't. I don't care about Florida or New York. It doesn't explain Victoria. Herd immunity is not a sensible explanation either.

Victoria is proof that masks and/or lockdowns work. Check mate. End of discussion.
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Yep. There just no point.

Your comment about whackamole is a great one. Cause that's what they do. They, both conspiracy theorists and the nonsense they parrot, use various psychological tricks to convince people. And one of them is flooding you with so many individual pieces of bad evidence that it tricks people that if even a portion of the evidence is true the whole thing must be. This of course has the side consequence of tending to make conspiracy theories insanely convoluted.

It's the worst thing about youtube, it's a breeding ground for the most brainwashy conspiracies to thrive.

Amusingly thrive itself is also the name of a pseudoscience video on YouTube :D. One I had the unpleasant experience of having to sit down and watch with one of my exes family. :(
 
birdup.snaildown said:
www.taiwannews.com.tw

WHO inspector caught on camera revealing coronavirus manipulation in Wuhan before pandemic | Taiwan News | 2021-01-18 00:31:00

Video shows scientist mention coronavirus experimentation in Wuhan lab weeks before pandemic | 2021-01-18 00:31:00
www.taiwannews.com.tw www.taiwannews.com.tw

Not posting this as fact. I haven't researched it sufficiently to make up my mind. Just wondering about everybody's thoughts on the origins of this virus... Is it outrageous to suggest that maybe it leaked from WIV?
Click to expand...

Is it outrageous to suggest it was deliberately leaked? Yes. Is it outrageous to think it was a fuck up? No. But on balance I think it's likely it was natural.

And let's be real here.. What does it prove if a bs4 level lab was working with Coronaviruses before covid? Probably nothing.

The whole point of those labs is to research and learn more about viruses likely to jump to humans and cause pandemics. That's the whole point. So that they might have been working on one is hardly an exceptionally profound coincidence. Isn't it kinda exactly what you would expect them to be doing?

This again kinda seems like seeing a fire break out and blaming the closest fire department and then pointing out how they were working with handling fires as evidence of culpability.
 
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It doesn't prove anything.

It is, however, a bit strange that a laboratory in Wuhan was experimenting with bat-coronaviruses on humanized mice two weeks before a bat-coronavirus supposedly emerged from a wet market 12km away...

I'm not suggesting it was deliberately leaked.

JessFR said:
I think it's likely it was natural.
Click to expand...

Based on what?
 
birdup.snaildown said:
It doesn't prove anything.

It is, however, a bit strange that a laboratory in Wuhan was experimenting with bat-coronaviruses on humanized mice two weeks before a bat-coronavirus supposedly emerged from a wet market 12km away...

I'm not suggesting it was deliberately leaked.



Based on what?
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Why? We knew bat coronaviruses were a danger for jumping to humans and causing a pandemic. Is not such experiments exactly what you'd expect a BS4 laboratory to be involved with (assuming this rumor is actuate of course).

Why do I think it was probably natural? Experts around the world have essentially ruled out man made intervention in the viruses genome, which doesn't rule out it being leaked but probably makes it less likely.

And well, this was inevitable. This was gonna happen sooner or later. It always was. And well... when you hear hoofs, think horses not zebras. It might be a zebra, but it's probably a horse.
 
JessFR said:
Experts around the world have essentially ruled out man made intervention in the viruses genome
Click to expand...

I didn't suggest that the virus was man made... But I also am not confident that experts know enough about coronaviruses to be able to differentiate between an unknown virus and a manipulated virus.

I'm not suggesting that the WIV was doing anything wrong either by experimenting with bat coronaviruses.

It just seems like a weird coincidence if it is unrelated.
 
Why is it unusual that a lab in an area chock full of bats is working on a bat virus?

I’ve been in two biohazard facilities that were level four and they do not mess around. I don’t see it being an escape unless someone seriously screwed up and just completely ignored protocol. It’s difficult to imagine with the controls they keep on pathogens.
 
This was an interesting read, particularly how they attempted to trace the precise source of a Covid outbreak in a hotel, dismissing surface transmission and instead identifying aerosol contamination in a confined space:

www.theguardian.com

How New Zealand's Covid success made it a laboratory for the world

Small outbreaks and universal genomic sequencing provides unique insights into how coronavirus spreads
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
 
birdup.snaildown said:
I didn't suggest that the virus was man made... But I also am not confident that experts know enough about coronaviruses to be able to differentiate between an unknown virus and a manipulated virus.

I'm not suggesting that the WIV was doing anything wrong either by experimenting with bat coronaviruses.

It just seems like a weird coincidence if it is unrelated.
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As I said "which doesn't rule out it being leaked but probably makes it less likely." And I am reasonably confident they can.

I don't think it's a weird coincidence at all. As cduggles also pointed out.

What people often think is either proof of 1 thing, or a coincidence, in my experience VERY often has an answer where there actually is a more mundane explanation, and yet it's actually still not a coincidence.

As in this case, where it's probably not a coincidence at all, but it probably also doesn't mean anything.
 
birdup.snaildown said:
Gee, I dunno. It skipped a generation?

...

If neither lockdowns or masks work, explain Australia. I can't prove that both of them work, but at least one of them must be working... unless you have some alternate explanation?

All the COVID conspiracy people are making this more complicated than it is.

Either you have a sensible explanation for Victoria or you don't.
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explain Australia? okay, after you explain why heavily masked & locked down states such as NY/CA are doing FAR WORSE than mask-free & lockdown-free states like Florida, which was already mentioned..

if anything Australia proves masks dont work for the simple fat that nobody is wearing them & still nobody is getting sick, so I dont see how that helped your point.

I think youre just in denial & or not open to countering facts.
 
Mask use in Victoria during lockdown, according to my quick Google, was in the upper 90% range.

That people aren't wearing masks where there are outbreaks doesn't tell you anything.
 
JessFR said:
As someone who's dated at least 2 pretty heavy conspiracy theorists. Take my advice. Don't go down this rabbit hole.

I've spent hours arguing futiley with my exbf that Australia HAS NOT ALREADY REACHED HERD IMMUNITY. that's his excuse. Lockdowns and masks don't work, cases actually went down because of herd immunity. And also that covid is already everywhere and therefore it the cases are higher the health risks are less bad than they look (he seems to entirely ignore the sewer monitoring systems).

These people just believe whatever they want to believe and trust garbage studies and pseudoscience and then accuse others of going "against the science". It's just nonse
JessFR said:
Yep. There just no point.

Your comment about whackamole is a great one. Cause that's what they do. They, both conspiracy theorists and the nonsense they parrot, use various psychological tricks to convince people. And one of them is flooding you with so many individual pieces of bad evidence that it tricks people that if even a portion of the evidence is true the whole thing must be. This of course has the side consequence of tending to make conspiracy theories insanely convoluted.

It's the worst thing about youtube, it's a breeding ground for the most brainwashy conspiracies to thrive.

Amusingly thrive itself is also the name of a pseudoscience video on YouTube :D. One I had the unpleasant experience of having to sit down and watch with one of my exes family. :(
Click to expand...
define "bad evidence" ?
Click to expand...
 
Bad evidence is evidence that's never been repeated anywhere. That wasn't been done using proper scientific standards. Especially when it defies existing consensus by experts in the relevant field.
 
I have to admit, the "lab leak hypothesis" of covid seems more and more plausible as time goes on. It's difficult to say with any degree of certainty, and you gotta kind of sift through all of the "CCP bioweapon to kill the round-eyes!"-type crap, but some seemingly respectable scientists have raised the issue, and I'm no scientist but it definitely seems like it has foundations to it, from what little I've read regarding this issue. It's also weird (but understandable maybe, when looked at in the light of conspiracy theories and China not wanting to make it seem like a screw-up on their part somehow contributed to this pandemic) how committed some people and institutions are to "debunking" this concept, when it seems, at the very least, like a real possibility.
 
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@cduggles

It's not a co-incidence that they're studying bats. It is, however, a co-incidence that a bat coronavirus supposedly emerged from a wet market within walking distance from a lab that they are experimenting with bat coronaviruses on humanized mice. If you can't acknowledge that as even a mild co-incidence, I'm not sure what else to say... especially since there is no evidence that the virus originated in the wet market. They don't have a patient zero, do they?

Last time I checked (I could be wrong here, I dunno) the species of bat that they think carries the virus is native to south China, which is nowhere near Wuhan.

I'm not saying I'm convinced it was an accidental leak from the lab, but I'm also not convinced it wasn't.
 
birdup.snaildown said:
@cduggles

It's not a co-incidence that they're studying bats. It is, however, a co-incidence that a bat coronavirus supposedly emerged from a wet market within walking distance from a lab that they are experimenting with bat coronaviruses on humanized mice. If you can't acknowledge that as even a mild co-incidence, I'm not sure what else to say... especially since there is no evidence that the virus originated in the wet market. They don't have a patient zero, do they?

Last time I checked (I could be wrong here, I dunno) the species of bat that they think carries the virus is native to south China, which is nowhere near Wuhan.

I'm not saying I'm convinced it was an accidental leak from the lab, but I'm also not convinced it wasn't.
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I’m not entirely sure what to make of the idea of a naturally-occurring bat virus escaping a lab. It’s possible.
I’d like to hear from an evolutionary virologist about the differences one might expect to see in a virus from a lab and a “naturally” zoonotic virus, if such differences exist.
Wet markets bring a lot of weird animals together and make it more likely for a virus to adapt and become infectious to a human host.
And had SARS not involved civet cats and bats and wet markets, I would probably be more suspicious. But it did.
 
Burnt Offerings said:
I have to admit, the "lab leak hypothesis" of covid seems more and more plausible as time goes on. It's difficult to say with any degree of certainty, and you gotta kind of sift through all of the "CCP bioweapon to kill the round-eyes!"-type crap, but some seemingly respectable scientists have raised the issue, and I'm no scientist but it definitely seems like it has foundations to it, from what little I've read regarding this issue. It's also weird (but understandable maybe, when looked at in the light of conspiracy theories and China not wanting to make it seem like a screw-up on their part somehow contributed to this pandemic) how committed some people and institutions are to "debunking" this concept, when it seems, at the very least, like a real possibility.
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People probably want to debunk it because it goes hand in hand with all sorts of other bullshit claims about covid. Misinformation costs lives.

You're right, if can't be entirely ruled out that it wasn't a lab leak. But given it was going to happen regardless and there's little if any good evidence that it was a lab leak, why not just assume the more likely explanation and wait and see if new evidence shows up.

People seem to often feel like they need to pick an belief now. That they can't take the position that they don't know for sure.

Obviously China wants to cover up their stupid decisions early in the pandemic and they don't want to be blamed for the pandemic because their wet markets are breeding grounds for this kinda virus. That's not surprising.
 
cduggles said:
I’d like to hear from an evolutionary virologist about the differences one might expect to see in a virus from a lab and a “naturally” zoonotic virus, if such differences exist.
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I've actually looked into this at some length.

The conclusion I came to was that, if it were genetically altered in any way using modern techniques, we'd be able to see it. No question.

So I'm satisfied that it's not an engineered virus.

However, that doesn't rule out of course a lab intentionally using selective reproduction the way we've done with crops for thousands and thousands of years to simulate how the virus might mutate in the wild. That is done quite often to try and see what viruses we might have to deal with in the future and learn about them before they happen. I believe they did similar experiments during the h5n1 scare.

If this was a virus "created" like that, it probably couldn't be proven by looking at its genome. Since it's essentially still been created "by nature" just with a little help from us.

If this did escape from a lab, that's what I am expecting it to be. Although I'm still of the view that it's a lot more likely to just be the inevitable pandemic experts have been warning people was coming for decades.

But people didn't listen, as usual they worried about today's concerns and not some future problem. Just as they do with climate change.

Then when it happens people are all like "we must make sure we never let this happen again!" which they commit to for a few decades, until the people who lived through it stop being the ruling age group and the new rulers forget the lessons of the past.

People never take action before people die, only after, and only until they forget again after a few decades.
 
It would be weird for a virus in a lab to evolve to be zoonotic without an intermediate host, which is why I don’t think it developed in a lab, where animal models are used to study pathogenicity.
Here’s a lovely little piece on the development of zoonotic viruses:
www.stanforddaily.com

Understanding COVID-19, zoonotic viruses

Coronaviruses are zoonotic, meaning they originate in animals and can eventually be transmitted between animals and people. Many experts believe that the novel coronavirus originated in horseshoe bats.
www.stanforddaily.com www.stanforddaily.com
 
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