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Thread: Origin of COVID: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box at Wuhan? Part 1

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    Default Origin of COVID: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box at Wuhan? Part 1

    .
    This is far too long, detailed and sciencey for the usual fools to go near, so no bans

    By Nicholas Wade | May 5, 2021

    Members of the World Health Organization (WHO) team investigating the origins of the COVID-19 coronavirus arrive by car at the Wuhan Institute of Virology on February 3. (Photo by HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP via Getty Images) Members of the World Health Organization (WHO) team investigating the origins of the COVID-19 coronavirus arrive by car at the Wuhan Institute of Virology on February 3. (Photo by HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP via Getty Images)

    The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted lives the world over for more than a year. Its death toll will soon reach three million people. Yet the origin of pandemic remains uncertain: The political agendas of governments and scientists have generated thick clouds of obfuscation, which the mainstream press seems helpless to dispel.

    In what follows I will sort through the available scientific facts, which hold many clues as to what happened, and provide readers with the evidence to make their own judgments. I will then try to assess the complex issue of blame, which starts with, but extends far beyond, the government of China.

    By the end of this article, you may have learned a lot about the molecular biology of viruses. I will try to keep this process as painless as possible. But the science cannot be avoided because for now, and probably for a long time hence, it offers the only sure thread through the maze.

    The virus that caused the pandemic is known officially as SARS-CoV-2, but can be called SARS2 for short. As many people know, there are two main theories about its origin. One is that it jumped naturally from wildlife to people. The other is that the virus was under study in a lab, from which it escaped. It matters a great deal which is the case if we hope to prevent a second such occurrence.


    I’ll describe the two theories, explain why each is plausible, and then ask which provides the better explanation of the available facts. It’s important to note that so far there is no direct evidence for either theory. Each depends on a set of reasonable conjectures but so far lacks proof. So I have only clues, not conclusions, to offer. But those clues point in a specific direction. And having inferred that direction, I’m going to delineate some of the strands in this tangled skein of disaster.

    A tale of two theories. After the pandemic first broke out in December 2019, Chinese authorities reported that many cases had occurred in the wet market — a place selling wild animals for meat — in Wuhan. This reminded experts of the SARS1 epidemic of 2002, in which a bat virus had spread first to civets, an animal sold in wet markets, and from civets to people. A similar bat virus caused a second epidemic, known as MERS, in 2012. This time the intermediary host animal was camels.

    The decoding of the virus’s genome showed it belonged a viral family known as beta-coronaviruses, to which the SARS1 and MERS viruses also belong. The relationship supported the idea that, like them, it was a natural virus that had managed to jump from bats, via another animal host, to people. The wet market connection, the major point of similarity with the SARS1 and MERS epidemics, was soon broken: Chinese researchers found earlier cases in Wuhan with no link to the wet market. But that seemed not to matter when so much further evidence in support of natural emergence was expected shortly.

    Wuhan, however, is home of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a leading world center for research on coronaviruses. So the possibility that the SARS2 virus had escaped from the lab could not be ruled out. Two reasonable scenarios of origin were on the table.

    From early on, public and media perceptions were shaped in favor of the natural emergence scenario by strong statements from two scientific groups. These statements were not at first examined as critically as they should have been.

    “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin,” a group of virologists and others wrote in the Lancet on February 19, 2020, when it was really far too soon for anyone to be sure what had happened. Scientists “overwhelmingly conclude that this coronavirus originated in wildlife,” they said, with a stirring rallying call for readers to stand with Chinese colleagues on the frontline of fighting the disease.

    Contrary to the letter writers’ assertion, the idea that the virus might have escaped from a lab invoked accident, not conspiracy. It surely needed to be explored, not rejected out of hand. A defining mark of good scientists is that they go to great pains to distinguish between what they know and what they don’t know. By this criterion, the signatories of the Lancet letter were behaving as poor scientists: They were assuring the public of facts they could not know for sure were true.

    It later turned out that the Lancet letter had been organized and drafted by Peter Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance of New York. Daszak’s organization funded coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. If the SARS2 virus had indeed escaped from research he funded, Daszak would be potentially culpable. This acute conflict of interest was not declared to the Lancet’s readers. To the contrary, the letter concluded, “We declare no competing interests.”

    Peter Daszak, a member of the World Health Organization (WHO) team investigating the origins of the COVID-19 coronavirus, talks on his cellphone at the Hilton Wuhan Optics Valley in Wuhan. (Photo by HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP via Getty Images) Peter Daszak, a member of the World Health Organization (WHO) team investigating the origins of the COVID-19 coronavirus, talks on his cellphone at the Hilton Wuhan Optics Valley in Wuhan.
    Virologists like Daszak had much at stake in the assigning of blame for the pandemic. For 20 years, mostly beneath the public’s attention, they had been playing a dangerous game. In their laboratories they routinely created viruses more dangerous than those that exist in nature. They argued that they could do so safely, and that by getting ahead of nature they could predict and prevent natural “spillovers,” the cross-over of viruses from an animal host to people. If SARS2 had indeed escaped from such a laboratory experiment, a savage blowback could be expected, and the storm of public indignation would affect virologists everywhere, not just in China. “It would shatter the scientific edifice top to bottom,” an MIT Technology Review editor, Antonio Regalado, said in March 2020.

    A second statement that had enormous influence in shaping public attitudes was a letter (in other words an opinion piece, not a scientific article) published on 17 March 2020 in the journal Nature Medicine. Its authors were a group of virologists led by Kristian G. Andersen of the Scripps Research Institute. “Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus,” the five virologists declared in the second paragraph of their letter.

    Unfortunately, this was another case of poor science, in the sense defined above. True, some older methods of cutting and pasting viral genomes retain tell-tale signs of manipulation. But newer methods, called “no-see-um” or “seamless” approaches, leave no defining marks. Nor do other methods for manipulating viruses such as serial passage, the repeated transfer of viruses from one culture of cells to another. If a virus has been manipulated, whether with a seamless method or by serial passage, there is no way of knowing that this is the case. Andersen and his colleagues were assuring their readers of something they could not know.

    The discussion part of their letter begins, “It is improbable that SARS-CoV-2 emerged through laboratory manipulation of a related SARS-CoV-like coronavirus.” But wait, didn’t the lead say the virus had clearly not been manipulated? The authors’ degree of certainty seemed to slip several notches when it came to laying out their reasoning.

    The reason for the slippage is clear once the technical language has been penetrated. The two reasons the authors give for supposing manipulation to be improbable are decidedly inconclusive.

    First, they say that the spike protein of SARS2 binds very well to its target, the human ACE2 receptor, but does so in a different way from that which physical calculations suggest would be the best fit. Therefore the virus must have arisen by natural selection, not manipulation.

    If this argument seems hard to grasp, it’s because it’s so strained. The authors’ basic assumption, not spelt out, is that anyone trying to make a bat virus bind to human cells could do so in only one way. First they would calculate the strongest possible fit between the human ACE2 receptor and the spike protein with which the virus latches onto it. They would then design the spike protein accordingly (by selecting the right string of amino acid units that compose it). Since the SARS2 spike protein is not of this calculated best design, the Andersen paper says, therefore it can’t have been manipulated.

    But this ignores the way that virologists do in fact get spike proteins to bind to chosen targets, which is not by calculation but by splicing in spike protein genes from other viruses or by serial passage. With serial passage, each time the virus’s progeny are transferred to new cell cultures or animals, the more successful are selected until one emerges that makes a really tight bind to human cells. Natural selection has done all the heavy lifting. The Andersen paper’s speculation about designing a viral spike protein through calculation has no bearing on whether or not the virus was manipulated by one of the other two methods.

    The authors’ second argument against manipulation is even more contrived. Although most living things use DNA as their hereditary material, a number of viruses use RNA, DNA’s close chemical cousin. But RNA is difficult to manipulate, so researchers working on coronaviruses, which are RNA-based, will first convert the RNA genome to DNA. They manipulate the DNA version, whether by adding or altering genes, and then arrange for the manipulated DNA genome to be converted back into infectious RNA.


    Read more: https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-...-box-at-wuhan/
    Last edited by cancel2 2022; 06-15-2021 at 03:02 AM.

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    the salient point is your guy is a fuck up
    Why Biden? Because Fuck You that's why. Barack Obama has a Grammy, an Emmy, a Nobel Prize, 2 terms as President and a Twitter account.

    Donald Trump has 2 impeachments.

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    Default

    Does it matter?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Jack View Post
    Does it matter?
    Yes, it matters.
    Common sense is not a gift, it's a punishment because you have to deal with everyone who doesn't have it.

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    probably a natural mutation. but if not, trump still fucked up so bad it cost hundreds of thousands of lives here. what difference does it make how it originated? it still is mitigated and controlled in society the same exact way, the opposite of what incompetent fucktard trump did.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Hoosier Daddy View Post
    probably a natural mutation. but if not, trump still fucked up so bad it cost hundreds of thousands of lives here. what difference does it make how it originated? it still is mitigated and controlled in society the same exact way, the opposite of what incompetent fucktard trump did.
    Trump!
    Common sense is not a gift, it's a punishment because you have to deal with everyone who doesn't have it.

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    Quote Originally Posted by RB 60 View Post
    Fuck up!
    yup, your guy
    Why Biden? Because Fuck You that's why. Barack Obama has a Grammy, an Emmy, a Nobel Prize, 2 terms as President and a Twitter account.

    Donald Trump has 2 impeachments.

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    Quote Originally Posted by RB 60 View Post
    Trump!
    yep, the fat chickenshit who was president, somehow. remember what he tweeted about obama's response to ebola, Four laboratory-confirmed cases of Ebola virus disease (commonly known as "Ebola") occurred in the United States in 2014.[3] Eleven cases were reported, including these four cases and seven cases medically evacuated from other countries.[4] The first was reported in September 2014.[5] Nine of the people contracted the disease outside the US and traveled into the country, either as regular airline passengers or as medical evacuees; of those nine, two died. Two people contracted Ebola in the United States. Both were nurses who treated an Ebola patient; both recovered.[4]

    On September 30, 2014, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that Thomas Eric Duncan, a reportedly 42-year-old (later corrected by CDC reports as a 45-year-old[6]) Liberian national visiting the United States from Liberia, had been diagnosed with Ebola in Dallas, Texas.[7][8] Duncan, who had been visiting family in Dallas, was treated at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas.[9][10] By October 4, Duncan's condition had deteriorated from "serious but stable" to "critical".[11] On October 8, Duncan died of Ebola.[12] The other three cases diagnosed in the United States as of October 2014 were:

    October 11, 2014, a nurse, Nina Pham, who had provided care to Duncan at the hospital.[13]
    October 14, 2014, Amber Joy Vinson, another nurse who treated Duncan.[14]
    October 23, 2014, physician Craig Spencer, diagnosed in New York City; he had just returned from working with Doctors Without Borders in Guinea, a country in West Africa.[15] He was treated at Bellevue Hospital in New York City.[16]
    Hundreds of people were tested or monitored for potential Ebola virus infection,[17] but the two nurses were the only confirmed cases of locally transmitted Ebola. Public health experts and the Obama administration opposed instituting a travel ban on Ebola endemic areas, stating that it would be ineffective and would paradoxically worsen the situation.[18]

    No one who contracted Ebola while in the United States died from it. No new cases were diagnosed in the United States after Spencer was released from Bellevue Hospital on November 11, 2014
    In the summer and fall of 2014, Trump posted close to 100 tweets criticizing and, for lack of a better word, weaponizing, the Obama administration's response to the Ebola crisis. Trump's tweets included the observation "I know for sure that our leaders are incompetent." He called Obama "stupid" and suggested that he "personally embrace all people in the US who contract Ebola!" He also callously tweeted that an American medical worker who had contracted Ebola while abroad shouldn't be allowed back home, arguing that the person should instead "suffer the consequences!"

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    Quote Originally Posted by Hoosier Daddy View Post
    yep, the fat chickenshit who was president, somehow. remember what he tweeted about obama's response to ebola, Four laboratory-confirmed cases of Ebola virus disease (commonly known as "Ebola") occurred in the United States in 2014.[3] Eleven cases were reported, including these four cases and seven cases medically evacuated from other countries.[4] The first was reported in September 2014.[5] Nine of the people contracted the disease outside the US and traveled into the country, either as regular airline passengers or as medical evacuees; of those nine, two died. Two people contracted Ebola in the United States. Both were nurses who treated an Ebola patient; both recovered.[4]

    On September 30, 2014, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that Thomas Eric Duncan, a reportedly 42-year-old (later corrected by CDC reports as a 45-year-old[6]) Liberian national visiting the United States from Liberia, had been diagnosed with Ebola in Dallas, Texas.[7][8] Duncan, who had been visiting family in Dallas, was treated at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas.[9][10] By October 4, Duncan's condition had deteriorated from "serious but stable" to "critical".[11] On October 8, Duncan died of Ebola.[12] The other three cases diagnosed in the United States as of October 2014 were:

    October 11, 2014, a nurse, Nina Pham, who had provided care to Duncan at the hospital.[13]
    October 14, 2014, Amber Joy Vinson, another nurse who treated Duncan.[14]
    October 23, 2014, physician Craig Spencer, diagnosed in New York City; he had just returned from working with Doctors Without Borders in Guinea, a country in West Africa.[15] He was treated at Bellevue Hospital in New York City.[16]
    Hundreds of people were tested or monitored for potential Ebola virus infection,[17] but the two nurses were the only confirmed cases of locally transmitted Ebola. Public health experts and the Obama administration opposed instituting a travel ban on Ebola endemic areas, stating that it would be ineffective and would paradoxically worsen the situation.[18]

    No one who contracted Ebola while in the United States died from it. No new cases were diagnosed in the United States after Spencer was released from Bellevue Hospital on November 11, 2014
    In the summer and fall of 2014, Trump posted close to 100 tweets criticizing and, for lack of a better word, weaponizing, the Obama administration's response to the Ebola crisis. Trump's tweets included the observation "I know for sure that our leaders are incompetent." He called Obama "stupid" and suggested that he "personally embrace all people in the US who contract Ebola!" He also callously tweeted that an American medical worker who had contracted Ebola while abroad shouldn't be allowed back home, arguing that the person should instead "suffer the consequences!"
    Trump!
    (copy and paste without the link)
    Common sense is not a gift, it's a punishment because you have to deal with everyone who doesn't have it.

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    Quote Originally Posted by RB 60 View Post
    Trump!
    (copy and paste without the link)
    https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trum...ry?id=48707950

    here ya go, helpless little critter. god forbid you google ebola and see how it was contained compared to this shit, you fucking clown.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Hoosier Daddy View Post
    https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trum...ry?id=48707950

    here ya go, helpless little critter. god forbid you google ebola and see how it was contained compared to this shit, you fucking clown.
    It's one of the rules here to post the source, dipshit.
    Common sense is not a gift, it's a punishment because you have to deal with everyone who doesn't have it.

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    Quote Originally Posted by RB 60 View Post
    It's one of the rules here to post the source, dipshit.
    for helpless clowns who cannot use google or have a memory span of an average adult. this was only 7 years ago, stupid. and you cannot remember it without a link?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Jack View Post
    Does it matter?
    Jack Me Off has pronounced, we can all go home now!!

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    Quote Originally Posted by RB 60 View Post
    Trump!
    Only a gibbering fucking idiot would ask what difference does it make?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Jack View Post
    Does it matter?
    So if somebody released a tactical nuclear weapon in Nawlins, would ask the same question? Assuming you lived of course, fucking numbskull.

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