Those were unwarranted conclusions, and I have admitted as much. Can you do the same?
I did not make claims that require recanting.
It seems to me that it is completely unwarranted to conclude that there was a lab leak based on how proponents of the lab leak were treated. This isn’t evidence for a lab leak. So why do you continually bring it up?
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That would be unwarranted.
Of course, I did not do that. I am certain that was not a factor in the FBI and the DoE determining that the lab leak was the likely source of Covid.
The censorship is relevant to the discussion, however inconvenient it is for those protecting their past actions and the CCP.
It still puzzles me why you don’t think either of the two articles are worthy of your addressing them… Never mind, I just figured it out. Duh.
I thought the charactization from those labs (the only two out of the many to even concede this much) was “low confidence”. Did they actually characterize that conjecture as “likely”, or did you just make that up?
DoE was low confidence and FBI was moderate confidence, My “characterization” is more than accurate and less a characterization; it is a quote. The FBI and Department of Energy said “most likely.”
I will post documentation again.
One problem with splitting off threads is that previously posted evidence is lost.
ahh - thanks! Yeah - I’m not spending a lot of time scanning other threads around this.
It will be interesting to see if the FBI lab can ever produce any evidence to back up their claim. Meanwhile, as T says, I will probably trust those who are transparent with their evidence and aren’t afraid to let it be examined. Those who hide any alleged evidence behind closed doors … well … their fear of any illumination or cross-examination speaks for itself.
And meanwhile, even if the plausibility did work out to be demonstrably true, there would remain the big “so what?”. It’s pretty evident that the only motivation driving this latest news cycle is for conspiracy theorists desperately trying to land something (anything at all) for themselves to feel better about - and actually they still manage to be wrong even about that.
Mervin, have you ever had a security clearance and had access to secret or top secret information?
Those of us who have know that sharing information must be balanced against the risk of revealing and thereby endangering the source.
As for the “so what,” there are several whats. A few include:
- Is China responsible for the deaths and damage?
- Should gain of function research be done on these deadly pathogens?
- Should lab security be tightened?
- Should the US support research in a country that destroys evidence and records when something goes wrong?
- Should social media be allowed to censor and dismiss discussion as they did?
I could go on
That is not evident to me, and you statement is an insult to many thinking people,
Prevention of a future release is also a motivation. Reduction of censorship is a motivation. Holding government officials accountable for misleading the country is another. Many others…
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Perhaps. And that maybe only through negligent practice of some kind - if even that. It’s pretty hard to make a case of malicious intent when their own country suffered and still suffers a good share of the consequences.
I trust the scientists to make good judgement calls on those things. Because they are right a whole lot more often than those who follow tribal allegiance rather than evidence.
That’s probably never a bad thing regardless of the answers to any of these questions.
That’s always been a live question with China (and other courntries too no doubt) for generations now. That not a new dilemma with COVID.
What censorship? It’s blindingly obvious to me you don’t have a clue what real censorship looks like. You need to visit some other countries (like China perhaps). If there were real censorship in this country, then we wouldn’t have around a third of our country believing all the stuff that you somehow think is being censored. And many media outlets are created just for the purpose of spreading ideologies that support all this stuff. Does that look like censorship? Just because there are a few organizations (like this one) that try to doggedly pursue actual truth and evidence, and see no need to be yet another platform alongside the many who spew ideology instead, that does not censorship constitute. It just means there are still a few responsible journalists and organizations left out there who see no need to give yet one more megaphone to all the conspiracy mongers that dominate so much of our national attention.
I’ll begin to take that more seriously when I see anybody consistently apply it to anything other than whatever political tribe they’re against.
The discussion of the lab leak was shut down in this country.
Merv, I have been on three continents and in 8 countries since January 1. And my past travels are similar. At least 14 countries last year.
How do your travels compare?
I have filled a passport and had to send it back for more pages.
I apply it uniformly.
I don’t travel anywhere near that much. But at least I know better. It sounds like you should too. You have even less excuse than I do for being taken in by this stuff.
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Mervin insults himself when he degrades the motivation of people he strongly disagrees with.
Is this a joke? You honestly think that discussion of the lab leak was shut down? Discussion amongst who? Because I had plenty of conspiratorial friends who were sharing and talking about it and discussing it over and over and over from the beginning of the pandemic. People were going on major media outlets. It seemed like an entire political party got behind the lab leak idea and kept repeating it and sharing it and repeating it and sharing it. We discussed it at various points here on these forums as various people talked about it.
Here are some of the major threads that tended to popup everytime the public was discussing things:
From September 2020:
From May 2021:
From October 2021:
From July 2022:
Today, people remarkably claim discussion was “shut down.” And remarkably they now say statements by the FBI presented with no evidence are to be taken on authority, while probably not even a month ago dismissing many things that the FBI says without a shred of thought. The same people also have an impressive skill of rejecting or ignoring the evidence that points to a natural origins and have throughout the entire pandemic. They follow bloggers who scour the CDC site and find random tidbits of information that they then misunderstand and take out of context, as if they know better than actual scientists. And thus the CDC becomes a lying organization who publishes misleading statistics, but secretly has true statistics at the same time that real scientists are too incompetent to understand.
The “true discussion” was shut down argument is one of the oldest tricks in the book for pseudoscientific positions. You can literally and lazily do it for humans causing climate change, young earth creationism, anti-evolution positions, flat earth positions, the electric universe nonsense, etc.
The whole thing seems quite absurd to me. Especially because many people who are convinced of the lab leak and how serious of an issue this is- Also downplayed the pandemic every chance they got. So the virus is really no big deal, yet it’s a really really really really really really really really really really really really big deal that it leaked out of a lab and Anthony Fauci needs to answer to Marjorie Taylor Greene and the American people for the evil that he’s done for this virus that’s no big deal yet is the biggest deal in the entire world.
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I regretted making the comment, and thought I exaggerated my reading of what was said:
As much as I would like to revise what I said about Mervin insulting himself, his comment is insulting to me as I learn more about what people behind the scenes were saying among themselves about the lab leak theory compared to what they said publicly.
And the reference to latest news cycle evidently makes reference to the video footage that has come out recently regarding the events on 1/6/21.
I’ll confess, it’s hard for me to kick the jadedness I feel towards certain quarters lately. I probably just shouldn’t say anything about it at all.
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Not a joke.
On many social media platforms discussion was either deleted or stamped with “this has been debunked.”
And here on this forum a moderator told me that the lab leak theory was like believing the moon landing was faked and people who supported it were just stroking their egos. Then the thread was moved private.
The exact quotes:
“As far as I am aware the “lab origin” of COVID theory is on par with believing the US government faked the moon landing. Also, social media is hardly a great sources of factual information even without US Government meddling. ‘
“Not to mention that it strokes the ego (speaking as an ex-conspiracy theory believer). It taps into the part to of sinful nature that gets a buzz out believing that we’ve stumbled on to some secret, hidden knowledge that makes us feel superior to all those poor deluded ‘sheeple’.”
That’s fine, I know someone who will have something good to say about some people on both sides of this issue 
and I’m pretty sure it will be specifically in regards to their motivation in the controversy
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