COVID-19 News

[Randall]

Last time I crossed the border, we went to Toronto and had a great time. But that was quite a few years ago.

Meantime, this is an important article to consider when one considers whether or not coronavirus originated in a lab, or naturally:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/state-department-releases-cable-that-launched-claims-that-coronavirus-escaped-from-chinese-lab/2020/07/17/63deae58-c861-11ea-a9d3-74640f25b953_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-banner-main_foia-720pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory-ans

Interesting, but nothing in the article invalidates the issues I've raised in other posts. In particular, the claim that the genetic sequences of isolates from the bat coronaviruses known to be under research at the lab do not match those of covid-19 is very interesting because it finally admits that the same coronavirus believed to have made a zoonotic jump from bats to humans was indeed under study at the lab.

Additionally, the claim that the "genetic sequences of isolates" do not match COVID-19 is misleading, especially when evidence was confiscated from researchers, there was plenty of time to make sure no evidence of a direct link would be found, and the fact that the virus has already mutated outside the lab. So we would expect samples not to match, and that doesn't even get into the details of the science behind the specific tests.

The complexity of the science adds to the plausible deniability by making it too technical for most people to understand and fact-check. But the bottom line is that no reason I've seen yet for claiming COVID-19 did not have help from the Wuhan lab has been airtight. In fact, the more ardently someone makes the claim that science has disproved the lab theory, the more likely it is they are covering-up, because science doesn't work that way.

In science, ideas can never be completely proved or completely disproved. Instead, science accepts or rejects ideas based on supporting and refuting evidence, and may revise those conclusions if warranted by new evidence or perspectives.

 

[marduk]

Interesting, but nothing in the article invalidates the issues I've raised in other posts. In particular, the claim that the genetic sequences of isolates from the bat coronaviruses known to be under research at the lab do not match those of covid-19 is very interesting because it finally admits that the same coronavirus believed to have made a zoonotic jump from bats to humans was indeed under study at the lab.

Additionally, the claim that the "genetic sequences of isolates" do not match COVID-19 is misleading, especially when evidence was confiscated from researchers, there was plenty of time to make sure no evidence of a direct link would be found, and the fact that the virus has already mutated outside the lab. So we would expect samples not to match, and that doesn't even get into the details of the science behind the specific tests.

The complexity of the science adds to the plausible deniability by making it too technical for most people to understand and fact-check. But the bottom line is that no reason I've seen yet for claiming COVID-19 did not have help from the Wuhan lab has been airtight. In fact, the more ardently someone makes the claim that science has disproved the lab theory, the more likely it is they are covering-up, because science doesn't work that way.

In science, ideas can never be completely proved or completely disproved. Instead, science accepts or rejects ideas based on supporting and refuting evidence, and may revise those conclusions if warranted by new evidence or perspectives.

The problem with the claims of it being engineered are that every geneticist that has taken a look at the sequence has said that it doesn't look engineered. So it's kinda on those that believe it's engineered to prove that it is, not the other way around - the burden of proof isn't on those that don't think it is.

A couple other tidbits:
1. it's a pretty lame virus if you want to actually kill people. There's lots more highly infectious ones to choose from.
2. China was one of the first to sequence the entire genome and released the sequence into the public domain for everyone to use. That's an odd behavior if you're the one that created it as a weapon.

The scientists first obtained bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) fluid samples taken from the patients, isolated the DNA and RNA, then sequenced the genetic material. Most of the viral sequences belonged to the CoV family of viruses, which includes the SARS-CoV and the Middle East respiratory syndrome-related (MERS) CoV. The researchers then constructed the whole genomic sequence of the new virus—now known as COVID-19—and found that its genome sequence is 79 percent similar to the SARS-CoV, about 51.8 percent similar to the MERS-CoV, and about 87.6-87.7 percent similar to other SARS-like CoVs from Chinese horseshoe bats (called ZC45 and ZXC21). These findings clearly suggest that the virus originated from bats. Read more from Asian Scientist Magazine at: Chinese Scientists Sequence Genome Of COVID-19

 

[Gene Steinberg]

2. China was one of the first to sequence the entire genome and released the sequence into the public domain for everyone to use. That's an odd behavior if you're the one that created it as a weapon.

Also, WHO provided tests CDC could have used instead of wasting weeks developing their own.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/03/16/cdc-who-coronavirus-tests/

Long and short. Lead by the White House, the U.S. totally screwed up the response, and Trump still imagines it'll just go away.

Despite surge in COVID-19, Trump says: ‘I’ll be right eventually — it’s going to disappear’

‘Many of those people are young people that would heal in a day. They have the sniffles,’ President Trump told Chris Wallace during a one-on-one interview on...

www.marketwatch.com

 

[Randall]

The problem with the claims of it being engineered are that every geneticist that has taken a look at the sequence has said that it doesn't look engineered. So it's kinda on those that believe it's engineered to prove that it is, not the other way around - the burden of proof isn't on those that don't think it is.

When I'm discussing the issue here, assigning burden of proof doesn't apply because I'm not making a specific claim e.g. COVID-19 was engineered in a lab. What I'm doing is looking at both possibilities from an outside perspective and seeing which stack of evidence carries more weight, which results in a higher probability for it being the case. There is no claim of certainty either way.

When it comes to alien visitation, that's another story. I make the claim that alien visitation is real, and I also admit I don't have sufficient scientifically valid material evidence to back-up that claim. So for those who want that level of evidence as "proof", they certainly can use that as a reason to dismiss all the other evidence as well. Personally I don't think that is reasonable, but I recognize their position. Returning to COVID-19, below ...

A couple other tidbits:
1. it's a pretty lame virus if you want to actually kill people. There's lots more highly infectious ones to choose from.

I've seen several people parrot that sentiment, but it makes assumptions that prove themselves ( that the aim was mass killing ). There are at least a couple of reasons why exactly this type of virus would be more appropriate. It fits the CCP's Western destabilization agenda as alleged in previous posts here and elsewhere. Also, far more deadly undoubtedly designer killer virus would have far less plausible deniability, resulting in a high risk of military retaliation. That would not make sense. China has a history of playing the long game rather than American style shock and awe.

2. China was one of the first to sequence the entire genome and released the sequence into the public domain for everyone to use. That's an odd behavior if you're the one that created it as a weapon.

The CCP was also the first to seize all the evidence outside the lab, make researchers disappear and make sure the only evidence that anyone sees is that which serves to exonerate them. I know you don't really believe that if the CCP had physical evidence that compromised them, they would simply turn it over. They cannot be trusted as far as I could throw one of their new aircraft carriers.

Earlier in this thread I posted an Epoch Times video that attempted to establish the origin of COVID-19. It is controversial. Some dismiss it altogether as anti CCP propaganda. That would of course include the CCP itself, along with any of their influencers. There is no doubt that it is intended to implicate the CCP, so I won't pretend it's unbiased. But watch it anyway if you haven't already.

I traced back the essential claims made to their sources, and have not been able to discredit them as fake. That includes scientific papers written by the virologist at the lab who was working on making coronavirus transmissible to humans, and had found the key. Combine that with all the other circumstantial but proven evidence, and the CCP's pleas of innocence carry comparatively little weight.

So while I freely admit that out here in the public, that we lay people don't have enough evidence to conclusively prove the lab assisted development of COVID-19, opinions to the contrary simply don't carry more weight. Bio-warfare deployment strategies have been carried out in the past by a number of countries. This smells of exactly the same sort of intrigue.

 

[Randall]

This COVID-19 battle could also lead to mysophobia, OCD and depression

Chances are low, though admittedly not nil, that people may develop a phobia based on excessive focus on hand hygiene.

www.indiatvnews.com

Excuse me but, "... 'could' also lead to mysophobia, OCD and depression." We are already there. We've been there for a while. We're now living in a new era of germaphobe driven biopolitics where compliance is enforced by heavy fines. I just noticed a "FOR LEASE" sign on the Seanachie Irish Pub, one of our local favorites. I can't help but think that it was another casualty.

 

[Gene Steinberg]

COVID-19, opinions to the contrary simply don't carry more weight. Bio-warfare deployment strategies have been carried out in the past by a number of countries. This smells of exactly the same sort of intrigue.

I agree that there are unanswered questions.

But I don't subscribe to the possibility of biowarfare on the part of the CCP. They don't want to kill us. They want us to buy their stuff, and you don't sicken or kill your customers. They aren't stealing our technology to do us in; they are doing that to earn profits from the exploitation of that technology.

 

[Randall]

I agree that there are unanswered questions. But I don't subscribe to the possibility of biowarfare on the part of the CCP. They don't want to kill us.

Destabilization isn't the same as destruction, and a bioweapons deployment strategy test wouldn't have to inflict mass casualties. It would just have to be good enough to say, "Look what we can do at any time". Think of the games your own government has played in the affairs of other nations, the experiments it's done on its own citizens, and the demonstrations it's done with its weapons to send the same sort of message, then ask yourself if the CCP would be willing to do any less. The CCP is basically a military dictatorship that knew they were letting infected people onto international flights. I don't know how to spell it out any clearer. We've been infected on purpose.

 

[Gene Steinberg]

But at what cost?

 

[Randall]

But at what cost?

Apparently a lot less cost for them than us, at least so far. There are dozens of international lawsuits in the works now. But even if the plaintiffs win, what chance have they got of ever collecting. Besides that, people in high positions of power don't necessarily care about the cost for the masses below them unless it affects them personally. They forcibly harvest organs from their own people. They're holding two Canadians on what appear to be trumped-up spy charges in retaliation for us honoring our agreement with the USA on the extradition of one of their executives. That executive is being treated here with kid gloves while our people are being treated miserably.

 

[Gene Steinberg]

The cost to Americans is much worse due to executive incompetence.

But millions of people in China were out of work for weeks due to the pandemic. That means lost wages, lost taxes, lost business for the China-based companies that may take months or years to overcome. Was it all worth it?

 

[Randall]

The cost to Americans is much worse due to executive incompetence.

But millions of people in China were out of work for weeks due to the pandemic. That means lost wages, lost taxes, lost business for the China-based companies that may take months or years to overcome. Was it all worth it?

Maybe to them it's all relative and worth the risk. The rest of the world is still recovering. They came out of it ahead in comparison. Right now it looks like a win for them, and there's next to nothing we can do about it. Meanwhile, with the West destabilized, they continue to expand their military and takeover territory in the South China Sea. I really hope someone down there in your defense department doesn't just think this is a wacky conspiracy theory. There's dark underpinnings here.

How to stop China completing its takeover of the South China Sea | The Strategist

China appears to be accelerating its campaign to control the South China Sea and the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea. Beijing does itself no favours with the highly ambiguous nature of its claims ...

www.aspistrategist.org.au

 

[Constance]

Here’s how scientists know the coronavirus came from bats and not a lab

 

[urkotic]

I find Bret Weinstein's arguments (most on YouTube) that SARS-CoV-2 may have been accidentally leaked from a lab interesting if not fully persuasive (I just don't have the background to make a final judgment on a lot of the science in this).

It's a rabbit hole, but...

https://twitter.com/x/status/1279160021922668544

, and then a number of his videos on YouTube.

I definitely do not think Weinstein is a crank; he's a very smart, thoughtful guy. Doesn't mean I always agree with him but I do think he's worth a listen and for me at least not easily dismissed.

 

[marduk]

Personally, I think the most parsimonious answer is probably the right one.

It probably did break out from someone interacting with bats in a dumb way, like eating them. China then sought to repress the optics of the outbreak, because that's what China does. It's obvious that there was an attempt to cover the whole thing up to save face. And if it hadn't left mainland China, that would have been that.

But in a world of ubiquitous travel and information flow, that wasn't that. China loves to play the long game, but also loves to fall back on hundreds of years of traditional ways to deal with problems - like just shut people up or dissapear them if it embarrasses the state. Which didn't work at all, and it was obvious to the international medical and science community.

So they had to come somewhat clean with the whole thing, and have been in integrity damage control ever since. The TL;DR on this is that traditional animal handling practices are dumb and risky, and pretending things didn't happen like China (and Trump) pretends to do was dumb.

This is a 'stupid is as stupid does' scenario that China does over and over again. Honestly, I don't think they're as monolithic and brilliant as some seem to think they are. I have friends that are former Chinese nationals, and what they say to me over and over again is that China is nearly continuously on the brink of civil war, and is only haphazardly managing to hold itself together at all - it's why they're so authoritarian in their responses. Not because of power, but because of fear and an inability to do anything diplomatically after hundreds of years of oppression of major groups in their population. The response about Hong Kong isn't about Hong Kong as much as it's about projecting power about an inability to resist or leave China - because if some of their mainland states thought they could, they'd sure try. So then they send in the army and kill a bunch of people in what is clearly an international blunder that they have no choice but to do, because if they don't, in 50 years China will be Russia.

It's kinda like Trump supporters claiming he's a genius playing 4-D chess when everyone else is playing checkers. He's not playing a game at all, he's just doing stuff that makes him feel good and point fingers at everyone else like a four year old. Hence his Covid response. Stupid is as stupid does.

 

[Randall]

Here’s how scientists know the coronavirus came from bats and not a lab

Thanks. I've read and covered the flaws in that argument in other posts. It takes at least several hours of information gathering on the specific science involved and the way the logic is applied to the argument. In the end however, the scientific claim that COVID-19 had no lab help is non-conclusive. It is based purely on certain unprovable suppositions.

A telling point to start with is that the claim that COVID-19 did not come from a lab is not scientifically falsifiable. It's not how science works. So just understanding the way science works in the first place, and seeing the claim that scientists know it didn't because ( insert reason here ), indicates an agenda to convince rather than to simply do science. The best that science can do here is to provide evidence and see what hypotheses fit best.

I'm not going to repost all the reasons why articles like the one you linked to aren't convincing when examined on a deeper level, but I will leave you with a focal point. No intermediate species for zoonotic transmission has been found. However a virologist working at the lab in question on human transmissibility did discover and isolate the key talked about in the article and published a scientific paper on it.

Review this section of the Epoch Times documentary.

Related: Beijing’s Coronavirus Propaganda Has Both Foreign and Domestic Targets

 

[marduk]

Thanks. I've read and covered the flaws in that argument in other posts. It takes at least several hours of information gathering on the specific science involved and the way the logic is applied to the argument. In the end however, the scientific claim that COVID-19 had no lab help is non-conclusive. It is based purely on certain unprovable suppositions.

I agree.

However the converse is also true - there is also no evidence indicating that it didn't come from human interactions with bats accidentally, either.

 

[Randall]

I agree. However the converse is also true - there is also no evidence indicating that it didn't come from human interactions with bats accidentally, either.

Sort of. There is evidence. However that evidence is also inconclusive. So what we're left with is to weigh the evidence for both hypotheses and see which one comes out ahead. I've done that on a number of key data points and so far, the argument favoring the lab comes out ahead. One of the main reasons is the proximity of the lab to the pandemic's ground zero compared to the location where the bats in question live in nature.

The bats in question were not sold at the Wuhan market, and no intermediate species e.g. pangolins, were found to carry the virus. In nature, the bats live over a 1000 km away in Yunnan. However those same bats were under study at the lab in Wuhan where the transmissibility of coronavirus to humans was solved by virologist Shi Zhengli. Add-up all the other evidence and there's no contest. Check out this specific section of the Epoch Times documentary.

Related: The coronavirus didn't really start at that Wuhan 'wet market'

 

[Randall]

Let's also not forget the CCP's global propaganda machine that embeds state media content in mainstream foreign media ( among other things ).

Beijing’s Coronavirus Propaganda Has Both Foreign and Domestic Targets

Disinformation peddled abroad may be most successful in China itself.

freedomhouse.org

Let's Review:

 

[marduk]

Let me throw this on the table:

SARS-CoV-2 is closely related to the original SARS-CoV.[77] It is thought to have an animal (zoonotic) origin. Genetic analysis has revealed that the coronavirus genetically clusters with the genus Betacoronavirus, in subgenus Sarbecovirus (lineage B) together with two bat-derived strains. It is 96% identical at the whole genome level to other bat coronavirus samples (BatCov RaTG13).[46] In February 2020, Chinese researchers found that there is only one amino acid difference in the binding domain of the S protein between the coronaviruses from pangolins and those from humans; however, whole-genome comparison to date[when?] found that at most 92% of genetic material was shared between pangolin coronavirus and SARS-CoV-2, which is insufficient to prove pangolins to be the intermediate host.[78]

Coronavirus disease 2019

en.wikipedia.org

So sure a zoonotic origin hasn't been proven, but man it has very small genetic variations from ones we know have come from bats, and it may in fact have intermediate hosts (such as pangolins) in play.

Nature is complicated, but the math to me says that if it looks almost identical to a bat virus, it probably came from bats.

 

[Constance]

Let me throw this on the table:

Coronavirus disease 2019

en.wikipedia.org

So sure a zoonotic origin hasn't been proven, but man it has very small genetic variations from ones we know have come from bats, and it may in fact have intermediate hosts (such as pangolins) in play.

Nature is complicated, but the math to me says that if it looks almost identical to a bat virus, it probably came from bats.

From information released early on I had the impression that the evidence of this virus in pangolins was solid, and also that it had been found elsewhere in Civet Cats.