Did you… Never mind, I don’t understand the point of talking to you. I tried to carefully go through the things that you shared and evaluate the evidence or what their claims were. You seem to just post instantly spouting off whatever your opinion was at the beginning of the thread over and over and over again. I don’t really see where you bothered to address any of the evidence of the strong epidemiological links to the wet market as the initial epicenter that was part of the OP. Your main strategy seems to be to randomly grab opinion pieces from the internet and then criticize me or others when we don’t address all of them.
If you don’t want to present the evidence that it originated in the wet market, or don’t have any, just say so.
Continuing to ask me questions appears to simply be a stalling technique because you have no evidence of a wet market origin.
It’s in the opening post.
I’m still curious why you think gain of function research at the Wuhan institute is evidence for a lab leak.
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The answer is in the links — especially the long hidden email to Dr. Fauci from Kristian Andersen.
The opening post, your evidence, is only a geographical analysis.
I hope you understand one or more infected researchers from the lab (with the bad air handling problems) could have shopped at the market, infected others, and the disease spread from there.
What you presented says it spread from the market, not that it originated in the market. There have been many superspreader events that made no comment on origin.
You can’t say? Let’s just say there was gain of function research going on the in Wuhan institute. How is this evidence for a lab leak?
And that geographical analysis is consistent with a zoonotic origin. A lab leak could have occurred anywhere in the city, but a zoonotic release is much more likely in the areas where there are lots of animals. Also, there were two strains of the virus that leaked out which is inconsistent with a lab leak.
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If you don’t want to present the evidence that it originated in the wet market, or don’t have any, just say so.
Continuing to ask me questions appears to simply be a stalling technique because you have no evidence of a wet market origin.
Yet no infected animals were found in the market.
And on what basis did you decide the lab would not have been studying and manipulating multiple strains?
It’s presented in the opening post, which I have stated many times now.
There was a lot of time between the origin of the outbreak and the testing of animals in the market. That’s not too surprising.
For the sake of argument, let’s agree that they were studying and manipulating multiple strains of virus. How is this evidence for a lab leak?
I think this thread should have been entitled:
Evidence the Pandemic spread from a market; no conclusions on origination.
I’m not following this discussion in detail, but an email from Kristian Anderson is hardly evidence of a lab leak when he has long since become completely convinced that the origin was a natural spillover. (Note also that he was hardly an expert in coronavirus evolution at the time of the email.)
I can tell, as there has been a lot of evidence presented of a lab leak’s potential.
No evidence has been presented of origin in nature, only evidence that the disease spread from a market. The so-called “Definitive Proof” actually only spoke to a superspreader event, not origin.
I don’t know the origin. I know that proof of natural origin has not been presented.
This whole exchange seems like it should spawn a kind of parable. It might run thus:
Scientist (who has cited sources that proposition X is 98% likely to be accurate): “We’ve been able to determine that X is the likely cause of the event.”
Heard by public: “Science has proven that it’s X.”
Scientist’s reaction: “Well – not absolutely ‘proven’, but yes – it looks probable enough that if people want to run with it – at least they’re betting on the right horse. It’s the responsible direction to go at this point.”
Doubter from the public: “But look here, there’s a 2% chance it isn’t X, right?”
Scientist: “That’s right, but when it comes to policy or my family’s health, I’ll push for decisions based on the 98% probability, not the 2% possibility.”
Doubter: “So you haven’t proven that it’s X. I have these videos of talking people who feel just like me. And we say it isn’t X.”
Scientist: “What part of: ‘there is a 98% chance it is X’ don’t you understand?”
Doubter: “Well if you have no proof it’s X, why don’t you just say so?”
And the doubter and all who had the misfortune of listening to him, start down their alternate reality toward whatever consequences await them when it crashes into the real reality.
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And then other scientists disagree with the numbers, but they are censored or ignored by most media.
Even the former head of the CDC.
Such as? I’ve seen some unfounded opinions, but very little evidence, if any. For example:
I have personally manipulated viral genomes, and none of this makes sense. There is absolutely no reason I would use a double CGG. In fact, I would stay away from that double codon because it could introduce primer slippage if I were using primers to introduce the mutation (which is what I would most likely do). The two codons CGTAGA would be my choice if I were introducing an RR amino acid pair because it is not repetitive and 50% GC. I wouldn’t need the double CGG as some sort of marker, either. That’s just silly. I would have primers either side of the introduced furin site, clone the PCR product, and then have it sequenced. If nothing else, I would try to introduce a common restriction site which CGGCGG is not one of.
Also, furin cleavage sites have evolved independently in several lineages of coronaviruses, and wouldn’t you know it, they are different from each other. Finding yet another unique furin cleavage site is what we would expect if the cleavage site evolved naturally. When I manipulate viral genomes I will most often use known sequences because their function is known and proven. Very rarely would I use a novel sequence which I has no evidence for function. If SARS-COV-2 had an identical nucleotide sequence to other known coronaviruses I would be more suspicious of a lab leak than seeing a unique furin cleavage site.
Yes, a market full of live and dead wild animals that are known to house many different viruses and are a known risk for zoonotic disease.
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Well, they found it on the machines and market surfaces… I’m guessing the market and the animals likely to be infected have been shut down.
DOUCLEFF: Yeah. So these animals - also there’s proof that they were held in cages in or near one stall in particular at the market, a stall where scientists actually found a lot of SARS-CoV-2 on surfaces. Michael Worobey led two of these studies. He’s an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona. He says inside this stall, the virus was found on very specific surfaces, including machines where animals were butchered.
Physical evidence indicates that the coronavirus emerged at Wuhan seafood market : NPR
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Yes, machines and market surfaces where people with Covid had walked and breathed.
It is very likely the lab was a superspreader site.
Whether the spread came from animals or shoppers cannot be determined
They’re welcome to publish in real science journals and demonstrate their case. Or just publish opinion pieces in the WSJ, that’s just as convincing for many.
One virologists opinion vs. multiple peer reviewed papers by epidemiologists and virologists. Heck yeah, the one must be right!
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People are often pressured not to disagree with the accepted story.
And people jump to conclusions that aren’t supported by the evidence. This thread is a great example of that: a study provided evidence that Covid spread from a market. So people jumped to the conclusion that the animals rather than the people in the market were the source. They completely ignored the fact that shoppers or stall personnel in the market were the spread of the source, and these people could have been infected from a virus that was brought home from the lab by infected researchers.
People even claimed the spread in the market was “definitive proof” that the animals in the market were the source.
One Typhoid Mary working a food stall in the market, one who got the disease from a researcher could have been the source.
It is wishful thinking on the part of those who want to shut down disagreement.
Well, and if there were animals infected, one could say that they got them from the lab techs, too. I was only commenting on your question about whether animals had been found with the virus, since you seemed to want to know.
I don’t think that there’s any bad intent of any of the people present. Thanks.
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Actually, they did discuss this scenario up higher, and there are factors that make that less likely as a cause of 2 releases, as I understand it. Also, as Fauci said, the viruses that they know of being published weren’t related in any genetic way to Covid. Steve can help on that.
People are often pressured not to disagree with a round Earth. Therefore, the Earth must be flat.
Shoppers could have started the outbreak anywhere in Wuhan. On the flip side, a zoonotic outbreak would have occurred where the animals were, and that is exactly where the outbreak started.
Definitive proof? No. But it is yet another piece of evidence out of many pointing to a natural origin, and zero evidence for a lab leak other than there happened to be a viral research center in Wuhan (which was not the center of the outbreak).
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