2-tpg

You can ban me then (or just let this be my last post).

This HN user spend a year blasting the lab leak hypothesis, going so far as to point to Wikipedia's allowed sources, to try to suppress a submitted link here. Claiming the submitted links are from far-right organizations, not even touching the content. They use similar arguments and text on different articles, such as a weird suspicious support and praise for Peter Daszak, or just snip news article quotes as their argument.

I deem such behavior enemies of truth-finding and sincere curiosity.

The other poster he was doing his one-two narrative building with 11 months ago, is still active (very active now), his latest posts when linking, being in defense of Xiongxian cotton, interspersed with cookie-cutter hacker-linux stuff (because lots of hackers do care about Chinese cotton...).

Even if not a troll network, it is acting indistinguishable from it.

If HN is a community with a fixed recognizable name, then I am allowed to figure out the history. Did this person wanted to defund the police? Did this person yelled that Bitcoin was a bubble hoax? Did this person spend the better part of a year copy-pasting talking points against a lab leak, which add nothing to the conversation? Know your history, so you don't repeat mistakes in the present. Such as going into debate with this user about animals at meat market being the source, when they are not interested in the truth, just pushing their politicized narrative.

I want to be in a community with nay-sayers, rule-breakers, divergent critical thinkers, people who actually debate and make their original points, not copy-paste popular media and shit on bitcoin. This isn't it. The only entropy for me here is from comments already flagged.

Yes, I was way out of line with this, no site should stand for it. It was meant to be my last post here. I would keep calling out posters like that as enemies to truth, science, and investigation, since I find this more important than guidelines, or average karma. So, should make my own site or find another community. I won't apologize, but do sincerely thank you for your strong community management, and I hope you will see less of this in the future.

It is also frustrating to hear:

- Ah.. It came from the meat market (official positions) - Likely from live bats - Who are not sold at that meat market - Who are hybernating - Who come from a cave 900 miles away

Yes, yes, but what if instead it maybe came from a badly-run lab studying that exact bat just a few miles away?

- We strongly condemn any theory that may lead to the suggestion that it came from the lab. You are directly insulting the work of our Chinese colleagues, threatening our relations in Gain-of-Function research and funding, and furthering harmful conspiracy theories accusing the Chinese authorities of a cover-up. I, Peter Daszak, will do a thorough investigation into the origins, which all responsible scientists have already concluded is natural in origin.

SARS-CoV in its natural form is an interesting bioweapon.

No known treatment or vaccine. Targets the decision makers (presidents and ministers and military generals are older, and a virus is easier to reach them, than a bullet is). SARS-CoV has super-spreader events, and asymptomatic spread, making it very difficult to contain. It spreads incredibly easily (near-airborne), in confined spaces such as airplanes, but even the toilet plumbing, or shared airco. It offers plausible deniability, by pointing to a natural spill-over event or unsanitary meat markets. It causes enormous economic damage (the economy, not the cannon fodder, being the subject of modern warfare) and cultural damage (tracking and containment is costly and invasive as it damages trust in a free society). It is most readily available to small states and terrorist groups by extracting from live civet cats. Military-aged terrorists spreading SARS-CoV by simply boarding airplanes and visiting hot spots, and not even dying themselves, so they can do it all over again. SARS-CoV in first stages has vague symptoms, similar to other, more common viruses, which would give a pandemic a head start. Pandemics are good PR for fear-based terrorism. The strain on the hospitals is enormous, and military-aged men are too worried to reserve a bed for their elderly parents or their recovery.

More in the vast literature.

SARS-CoV-2 is complete trash as a bioweapon.

If complete trash, I would not be afraid of Iran being able to press a button and release SARS-CoV-3 for a 2020 repeat. Even if looking at viral bioweapons from the comical anthrax perspective: SARS-CoV-2 killed over 2 million people.

that the existence of the sample would almost certaintly be known.

Yes. It would make sense that it would be known. And if it would be known, that would probably sufficiently proof the lab leak hypothesis and end this quarrel. We wouldn't need to talk about probabilities much anymore. But that same argument kinda also works against the zoonotic origin hypothesis. It would make a lot of sense that after a year, we found the intermediate host, or patient 0. If there was a clear epidemiological explanation for a zoonotic origin, it would almost certainly be known. Maybe there really isn't.

SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 make really poor bioweapons

Often heard this, including from experts in bioscience (I am not one, you sound more like it).

So early on I did a search on Google Scholar for things like: SARS bioweapon to see what I could come up with. Turns out there is a lot of biosecurity and biowarfare literature from before the outbreak, which have entire chapters for SARS coronavirus as a weapon.

I really think if you tried to give some reasons for coronavirus being a poor bioweapon, it would expose either an inflated sense of expertise, or those reasons are precisely the reason coronaviruses are seen as attractive (and relatively cheaply available) bioweapon.

In a: don't do what I say, do what I do-manner: US military is warned not to use DNA tests from companies that offer cheap tests due to Chinese government funding. It may leave them open to "identification" and "attack". How poor would a gene-targeted coronavirus actually be?

The rest of your posts seems to gather support for other hypothesis, not as much attacking the lab leak theory as highly unlikely.

We know that patient 0 was not at the market, and that people at the market got infected.

So, perfectly valid scenario:

1. Scientists do controversial Gain-of-function research by collecting viruses from miles away and importing them to Wuhan.

2. Lab leak happens

3. First linked clusters pop up a few miles away in a rather unsanitary market, with plenty of reservoirs and infection possibilities.

4. Virus is found in environmental samples, including animal cages and pets and frozen foods, in Hunan market and else.

The only thing indirectly invoking a major conspiracy here, is the possibility: lab leak happens.

Or you know, you can account for a scenario, where Chinese authorities covered up a major conspiracy (Don't be afraid! It's only reason over authority!). I thought we were already at the point where this is common sense knowledge. Or else we would know what exactly is going on in those Uyghur concentration camps, but all we can do is estimate the extend of this inhumane conspiracy.

If the virus was from an animal source known to the lab, we would know already

Unless they started commanding to destroy samples, and sharing sequences of captured bats after the pandemic started.

it would be quite unlikely for the virus to take so much time to adapt to humans

All experts agree that SARS-COV-2 is extremely adapted to human infection. Like it appeared out of nowhere, not the gradual result of a natural spill-over. To pose: "It could have been even more infectious" as an argument against gain-of-function is not very strong. And if we agree that China did not deliberately release a finished product, it would be weird to see optimal adaptivity.

there is no obvious marker for genetic engineering

Gain-of-function does not create obvious marker. It is known possible to increase GoF of coronavirus using techniques that produce no markers at all. It is also tying it too closely to engineered bioweapons (vanilla SARS-COV is a bioweapon itself, even if collected from civet cats by terrorists), because the lab leak could also have been from a collected sample and accidental escape. There is no genetic engineering there at all.

How is this possible?

I can think of only a few scenario's where China messed up and the West remains silent. One would be where personal interests or blackmail would cause the decision makers to change their tune. A plausible one is where the West does not want to step on any toes, to safeguard that little data coming from China, while it is silently gathering international support for when the pandemic is under control. Another where SARS-2 developed from SARS-1 when it recombined in Wuhan in a HIV-patient (perhaps after a failed vaccine trial). If you are interested in protecting the health of the population, it is more important to shield possible victims of panic and hate, than to have a million negative mentions of HIV, China, and vaccines in the news.

I suspect Peter Daszak will face accountability due to the Streisand effect of his PR campaign against "conspiracies". You can't write a paper condemning scientists for even suggesting it was a lab leak of a human-intervented virus, and then field an objective origins investigation. A lot happened in 2020, but I doubt we forget that blatant mess.

Even if this turns out zoonotic (I hope it does), Daszak will scream he was right suppressing any investigation into opposing hypothesis. No scientist should live that down.

Deadlines are calculated from the average worker speeds. Perhaps some Amazon employees really are below average, or do not give it their best at all, so they are forced to piss in bottles and poop into the delivery car before returning it to station to meet these devilish average-worker deadlines.

I would agree that is a terrible problem. Perhaps Amazon should focus more attention on catching such employees early and letting them go (or offering them potty training with quarterly evaluations)? But then where does the average go? Deadlines get even tighter! Or you could make your wage relative to your worker speed: the fastest people earn the most. Only if you think you still earn enough for shitty work will you then be forced to keep doing that job. Or should Amazon be more kind to these employees who can't seem to manage their personal hygiene or fall way below average worker speeds? Treat and pay them the same as the 99% employees who don't shit and deliver? That would lead to an equal outcome for sure.

Agreed. But if Turing left a letter with the motive, or was known depressed or irrational, then I would not question the hypothesis that Turing was driven to suicide. Right now I can not see it as the fact it is presented as. I'd like to see some support from those on stage (not for lack of trying).

If suicide, I doubt there even is a clear motive (of course, forced hormone treatment is going to play a role in suicidal thoughts). It will be multi-faceted and reduction to one thing (be that the treatment, or something else) will not do full justice to the complexity of suicide.

Sometimes they're trying to protect their families from their feelings of despair.

I think the cyanide apple was there to provide the possibility of an accident, for Turing did not want to hurt his mother with a definitive suicide. Or maybe he took his lonely love for fairy tales way too far and expected to awake to a kiss from a beautiful prince. The latter is no less a speculative invasion of his private life, than taking his sexuality or treatment as defining of his scientific legacy or suicide.

it goes far beyond employees peeing in bottles.

No, but solid rhetorics. This is the part you give proof of the fact that Amazon have their workers pee in bottles to meet deadlines. Not point to something else entirely that goes far beyond the things you pose as facts, which are not. Don't look at that! Look at this documentary that goes far far beyond it. Well played! And solid one for PBS for exposing the worker abuse that Amazon is now in court for! We need the free press to save worker laws.

the fact that Amazon warehouse / delivery employees have to urinate in bottles to meet deadlines?

Amazon does not want its employees to piss into bottles. But sometimes employees (predominantly male I hope) do piss into bottles, because they did not plan correctly, or just had to go while on the road. If caught, these employees (and their managers) are then reprimanded. If they get a chance to defend themselves, of course they claim it was due to the deadline, not poor planning or bladder control or uncommon hygiene ethics.

Amazon factually states: Hey, if we required our employees to pee into bottles to meet deadlines, do you seriously think people would work for us, and not 100s of other low-paid jobs which don't have that medieval requirement?

Politicians: Hey, this you?! I have lots of pictures of bottles with piss! Where is your snotty reply now? You say that your employees do not have to piss into bottles, so how come I have those pictures?! Huh?!

It is embarrassing to both sides. Especially for official government employees (who also don't have to pee into bottles to meet deadlines, but I am sure you can turn up at least some pictures: if not, find any traces of cocaine use in the Capitol, then posit that the US congress have their senators use cocaine in the toilet to meet deadlines. Or, you know, bi-partisan plan to have low-skilled employees share in the American dream made possible by Amazon, but I guess that does not fit inside a tweet).

Could you give the support that it was the hormone treatment that drove Turing to suicide? It is a commonly accepted interpretation, but there is not much support for it these days (even the suicide is questioned now, pinning it as an accident or murder).

Turing died a full year after his hormone treatment was completed. No motive for the suicide was established. Turing was in good spirits and had, according to friends, underwent his cruel treatment with "amused fortitude".

Not defending Turing's struggles to be gay or his inhumane treatment. But if we are celebrating science, we can't just assume that the English government drove Turing to suicide, without looking at other possibilities, or finding support. Especially, when we all remember Turing's circumstance of death was far from clear.

Turing was a soldier. His mind was sharp as a blade. That's why the English government/military was involved with him. Infantry soldiers joke about the army owning you: giving you a fine for damaged government property, when you burn yourself for forgetting your issued sun block.

Turing's work caused death and saved lives of soldiers. Turing was a privileged scientist with clearance, interesting to foreign militaries, largely funded by his military, and with access to secret compute and information. Later in life, he was getting involved with very young, stray, men. He had his apartment broken into. He was beaten up.

Due to the common societal position on homosexuality at the time, and Russian agencies employing certain tactics, there was legit concern that one of the top UK soldiers was the target of sexpionage and blackmail. You could say Turing showed disgraceful behavior as a military servant with damaging information should it fall into the wrong hands (we would still not accept senior military people sleeping around with homeless Eastern-European teenagers and inviting them home, besides for maybe the commander in chief).

Next to the UK driving him to suicide, like you allude to, there is even the hypothesis that either Russia or the UK killed him and made it look like a suicide, to tie up loose ends, very similar to the death of Gareth Williams (supposedly suicided by crawling into a bag and closing the zipper), where BDSM and cross-dressing kinks, not homosexuality, was the angle. Some things never change, unless we remove all sexual taboos.

But let's celebrate the mind, for all of that does not even matter. He was also a great scientist (while a poor judge of Islam cults: His Turing test paper is supported by his outrageous invention that Islamists believe that women have no soul, but times were different back then, so I can forgive that).

This is once again completely wrong, WHO messaging was to prioritize masks

A tale of two billboards:

https://i.redd.it/uv1iz4w4sgk41.jpg

https://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/28ce46391425d4b406fe55a2...

bit slow to react for one simple reason: They have become way more reluctant about "crying wolf" after the 2009 pandemic didn't turn into the deadly thing they feared it would.

That is not the simple reason you think it is. It is the WHO, who should prioritize world health above all, not worry about "crying wolf" when every graph with heavily underreported numbers showed that COVID was going to crash Swine Flu and leave it as nothing but a memory. But they were slow to react, due to politics.

When the CDC was confronted with an outbreak of Hantavirus in 1993, they found some relations to Indian tribes, and news media picked up on that. This lead to panic and fear of Indian tribes. They learned lessons there that they now implementing.

This is 100% the Fox news interpretation

Just because US media is ugly, showtime, broken, and partisan, does not give you the right to beat down anything when it happens to align with one of your hated "news" channels. But perhaps CNBC is more to your liking: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/02/china-delayed-releasing-coro...

Yes, there is a logical difference between: "China knew masks would help. China communicated that masks would not help, but started hoarding protective equipment" and "China knew masks would help. China communicated nothing about that to the WHO or the world, but started hoarded protective equipment."

We saw that unwillingness to communicate with masks and H2H. (The doctors who treated the doctors who fell ill in start of December, treating pneumonia patients, started falling ill mid-end December, can you not hear the bell toll?). We saw blatant lying when China was fighting interdomestic flight of 5 million people from Wuhan, threatening to nail them on the pillars of shame for eternity, while actively instructing the WHO to say there was zero reason to ban flights from China. This was repeated every meeting, alongside the "decreasing window to act", up until having to call a pandemic (all technical qualifications were already there, this was not WHO acting rapidly and decisively). Mike Ryan was far from happy with the pressures applied on the WHO.

Not talking about the expats, as I realized there are some things too dangerous to speculate about. You can ignore that.

For diversity and inclusion in AI papers, they bring up facts like "All of the top 10 most-cited AI researchers are men" and then posit this as bad, and in support of a 50%-50% gender representation in AI. Like in: The field still has a long way to go. Not: we judged these extremely rare geniuses on their gender, and when you do this, you get bad diversity-and-inclusion optics.

And how to solve that perceived problem? Judge other academics on their gender, place them in a victimized group, and then compose your reference list with that in mind? The top 10 starts doing exactly that, because the guilt they feel is real. So they say nothing when privileged researchers can use the LatinX-in-AI, Women-in-AI, Black-in-AI, Gay-in-AI, Jewish-in-AI backdoors to get in a prestigious AI conference publication.

Interesting, thanks. Lots of information there, and this should all be investigation better.

It was not hindsight. Those expats were interviewed ("locked in Wuhan") and broke the "official" timeline.

In my mind, it can not be excused that China either: did not know about H2H, when the West, as an outsider, was well aware of the raging crisis. Or worse, it did know, but tried to stall. I am not giving China the benefit of incompetence, so in my mind, it is worse.

I did not say: China claimed there is no H2H. I said: China did not thought it was wise to inform of H2H. I agree that these are different, and that Fox pushed a narrative there.

It takes time to establish patient 0, and find epidemiological explanations. But they had doctors falling severely sick at start of December! That should ring a bell about H2H!

official recommendations from the WHO at the time was to treat this as very H2H

No, WHO sat in China's lap, and tweeted out your quote tweet: No strong evidence for H2H. We had to trust that China could keep this internal, without outside help, but they completely botched one of the basic things to figure out. WHO official messaging was: Do not wear masks, only wear one if you are ill, when China was already buying up protective equipment en masse.

ROME (Reuters) - The new coronavirus was circulating in Italy in September 2019, a study by the National Cancer Institute (INT) of the Italian city of Milan shows, signaling that it might have spread beyond China earlier than thought.

https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-italy-tim...

It is plausible that the virus was spread before recognized and treated as a global pandemic. Few flights were banned for months. Chinese tourists were in Italy up until the lockdowns.

But very often this "appeared outside China" is deflection and falsely invoked. Mind you that Reuters write: "it might have spread beyond China earlier than thought". Not: It came from Italy to China, and only became problematic in Wuhan. Every time China is reluctantly forced to move back the timeline on its patient 0, it starts pushing a narrative of COVID outside of China just a few months before their patient 0. It is a tiring use of an obvious and plausible bait-and-switch.

We already knew that Western expats and their relations in Wuhan got viral pneumonia in November 2019, while by January 2020, China did not consider it wise to inform the world of human-to-human transmission.

Peter Daszak was also signatory to this weird paper "in support of Chinese scientists".

We sign this statement in solidarity with all scientists and health professionals in China who continue to save lives and protect global health during the challenge of the COVID-19 outbreak. We are all in this together, with our Chinese counterparts in the forefront, against this new viral threat. The rapid, open, and transparent sharing of data on this outbreak is now being threatened by rumours and misinformation around its origins. We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin. Scientists from multiple countries have published and analysed genomes of the causative agent, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), and they overwhelmingly conclude that this coronavirus originated in wildlife, as have so many other emerging pathogens.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339367143_Statement...

Scary piece of propaganda, considering it was China who started rumours and misinformation, and tying the lab leak hypothesis to not supporting health professionals. All-in-all, a grave conflict of interest for a supposed objective investigation into the origins.

Another thing of note. A large percentage of the opposition to the lab leak hypothesis seems to stem from anti-Trump sentiment. In January 2020 the media first mentioned and entertained the lab leak hypothesis (interviewing military intelligence analysts) and seemed to treat it in a factual manner. Intelligence community knew that COVID was a thing before December (and China knew), even when China was saying the first case came in January. Then China deployed 1000s of online trolls and their diplomats would start spouting "no-you!" conspiracy theories, such as "US military brought COVID to Wuhan during Military World Games". In response, Trump started referring to COVID as the "China virus", and told reporters he thought the lab leak was likely, just not sure about accident or deliberate. Then with the anti-Trump sentiment this messaging was attacked for its crude irresponsible generalization (there are many Chinese origin people in US, just wanting a good life, without being spat on for importing the "China Virus") and interpreted purely as a political play by Trump to get the racist vote and being strong against China. So any mention of the "China Virus", and soon after, the lab leak hypothesis, became an indirect vote for far-right Conservatives or the basis of a racist conspiracy theory. Full circle when popular news started listing "COVID is leaked bioweapon research" as a conspiracy on par with Bill Gates being the Anti-Christ.

Very similar things happened with hydrochloroquine. HCQ was known effective for SARS-1, and prelim research showed it also was effective for SARS-2 (less grave symptoms developed) in the middle of February. Just did not help when the patient was already severely sick, so was not a cure, as touted by trigger-happy Trump months later. But then all of HCQ was discredited as being useless snake oil, and responsible for killing Americans when they drank aquarium cleaner. It was a political hit job on science, to punish Trump playing lose and politics. None the wiser or the healthier.

Finally. When the virus was not yet a pandemic (but clearly on the way there), the right prepper movement started talking about masks, self-treatment in case of hospital crisis, and food and vitamins (vitamin D and selenium were chosen for their effects against other viruses) to keep immune system healthy. Meanwhile in the US, progressive politicians held mask-less photo opportunities at China Town restaurants to signal their support and that fear is unreasonable. Democrat politicians, former presidents, and public health officials were stating to not buy N95 masks for these were not effective and wearing them would signal you were ill. Then Trump went muh-freedom-america on masks, and the progressive-left opposition to not mask wearing grew overnight.

On all these flip-flops, the US held conflicting positions, and any science was an afterthought. I classify your objection to the official US position on lab leak as lies as part of this politics game. It makes you think of your entire government as a single "bad" figure, blatantly lying or skipping over their intelligence agencies and geopolitics experts, because their irrational hatred for China feels deserving of a big lie. Trump and Pompeo fabricating the lab leak hypothesis seems like a bigger story than the Trump-Ukraine scandal. If you have any actual evidence for that (or strong circumstantial evidence beyond Trump playing loose with facts) then it is your duty to inform the American public of that radical conspiracy.

For myself, the biggest circumstantial evidence I've seen is the manipulation of discourse on social media by state-sponsored trolls and bots. Whenever the downvote bots, US #metoo, charges of racism, and astroturfing begins, there is usually a big thing they are trying to hide. Even when discarding lots of evidence tainted by politics, this one remains. What would be the motive?

Believe whatever you want. If you believe the zoonotic origin, ok sure, but your circumstantial evidence for that is weaker than the circumstantial evidence for a lab leak.

Yes. You are supposed to believe the administration of a president when they claim: The virus came from China. Whether deliberate or accidental, it likely originated in a laboratory. If you don't, I reckon you have bigger problems than a pandemic. If you can't trust your government on such critical matters, if you really believe the US government would stand for the secretary of State spreading lies, then you should probably flee to China and ask asylum there.

Sorry, but that's just not good enough.

But experts saying: "Virus is likely zoonotic, but we have no idea" is good enough? Again, demanding others to proof that a teacup is orbiting Venus is reasonable. But not when you can't even show the existence of teacups or Venus yourself.

Actual evidence in the zoonotic origin column greatly surpasses that in the lab leak column.

There is no actual evidence. Actual evidence of zoonotic origin would establish the transmission chain and identify patient 0. There is none. You have "Bats can be the original carrier". So your hypothesis could be true. It is circumstantial. Any actual evidence would instantly kill one of the hypothesis. So you share some responsibility there.

For an example of how to turn the BBC article into circumstantial evidence for a lab leak, is to study the franticness that went on with sequencing and publishing. Wuhan lab published the sequencing of bats captured in 2017 in 2020. It was complete PR management campaign, with scientists blaming "Mother Nature" not their research, information black-outs, and sharing of "secret" sequences years after the fact in support of zoonotic chain, while blocking any outside investigation into the origin which would support/not support the zoonotic origin.

"Did not see evidence of tampering" is too weak to trust for me.

Military-funded scientific biowarfare research should be different (use different, more advanced, tools) than run-of-the-mill bioinformatics research which US scientists work with. So if the scientist is not working on military research, their guess is as good as: "it was not engineered using common industry-standard known methods". It is misattributing authority, like quoting bio science experts saying "COVID can't be a weapon because the mortality is too low". No, you have zero idea about the military applications of biowarfare. If the scientist really was a military researcher, then they won't disclose signs of tampering to a news outlet or academic journal.

Another is that, for obvious reasons, military research would like to obfuscate its engineering. So it is unlikely they use easily detectable methods for that. It is perfectly possible to breed viruses in a lab, inside natural hosts. Then you won't see any biological markers of tampering, but the virus was still engineered by cross-breeding captured fruit bats or manually creating a zoonotic transmission chain to humans. So even without biological signs of tampering, the lab leak remains plausible.

Established fact. Biowarfare is often coated as "defense": we need to develop vaccines for future viruses or engineered pathogens. The offense is top secret.

SARS-COV are classed Category C pathogen by CDC, in line with Hanta virus. SARS-COV is documented as a viable bioweapon, precisely for the things we have seen in the last year, and studied as such by all capable militaries around the world.

The hypothesis is that this lab (and labs in Iran, China and Iran share biowarfare research) was conducting gene-targeted coronavirus research. Using proxy DNA-testing companies serving Western populace to get their data. A good weaponized coronavirus would have an extremely high R. It would look similar to the flu in the first stages. Then at a later stage (after two weeks) it would deliver a "payload" in the brains of the targeted populace, stopping breathing or causing haemorrhage. The non-targeted races would just have a flu and contribute to the spread. Other engineered viruses focus on plausible deniability, straining the hospitals with patients with vague symptoms, hard enough to visit the hospital and contribute to the strain on public services, soft enough not to actually kill them. It would throw the targeted country into chaos and unprepared for a war.

If you put two columns: zoonotic transfer, lab leak. And you list circumstantial evidence for both. Your zoonotic transfer column will be terribly empty in comparison. There is no patient 0, and the wet market was not the source, and we still do not have a zoonotic chain established. All those facts could be added to the lab leak hypothesis instead. For the most prominent clue of a biological attack is Single cause of a certain disease caused by an uncommon agent, with lack of an epidemiological explanation.. If you look at the history: SARS-1 naturally arose once in China. SARS-1 escaped a lab twice in the few years after. Chinese spies infiltrated Western gain-of-function virus-and-cancer-research labs, then smuggled back vials to China in a sock in their check-in luggage.

Domain expert scientists on the lab leak hypothesis: https://thebulletin.org/2020/06/did-the-sars-cov-2-virus-ari...

The evidence is with the intelligence agencies of Western nations. Trump and Pompeo (Pompeo was sanctioned by China hours after new President took office) did not make up their "China Virus" as some racist dog whistle. They were informed.

The WHO, when pressured by the UK for China not sharing information, nor allowing access to a team for investigation, said: Now is not the time to point fingers. We need China cooperation for now. The UK replied that it then has to assume the worst possible and prepare for a pandemic. It did.

Actual tangible evidence is rare, but it is pretty damning that: China blocks Australian-led world-wide investigation into the origins of COVID -- re-sentencing Australian prisoners to death penalty and messing with trade relations to hurt Australia's economy. They'd do that for a natural zoonotic-base virus that was out of their control? Phone location records show containment procedures around Wuhan lab around October 2019. Former military analysts in Israel pose the lab leak hypothesis as plausible, betting their reputation on it.

It is not too fair to ask actual tangible evidence, if evidence could mean a hot war or severely strained relations during a pandemic where people need to work together. And what is your tangible evidence for the popular zoonotic hypothesis? Just some experts saying that zoonotic base is most likely when interviewed for a popular news outlet? The most likely hypothesis should be the easiest to find actual support for. Why not?

I think a lot of criticism on the drastic measures to contain a relatively low CFR virus would be dispelled if the general public knew what the decision-makers then knew: a strange novel virus which seems extremely adapted to infect humans, and shows more similarities to the lab viruses worked with in biowarfare, than with captured and documented cave bats. Similar to the "airborne COVID" -- first publicized by the head of the WHO -- we seem to be managing the factual information flow to avoid panic, geopolitics, and xenophobia. It is right now not important that the general public knows it is dealing with an engineered virus or lab leak. Or at least... other things are more important right now.

I never heard this discussed as a big "risk". As far as I know this was always more or less known to be the endgame and not even a dangerous outcome but the "good" scenario.

The endgame is for the virus to turn into a community virus. This is not the big "risk". The big risk is in using leaky vaccines to combat the mortality and morbidity until we get there (or can reset economy). In chickens, use of leaky vaccines lead to the evolution of a disease which kills nearly all non-vaccinated. That's nothing like the seasonal flu (which would be a "good" outcome, indeed).

You'll find expert back-and-forth on leaky vaccines risk for humans here: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/349/6247/461 "Risk of ‘leaky’ vaccines debated" (2015)

Vaccines have saved millions of human lives, but according to evolutionary biologist Andrew Read they sometimes may also cause pathogens to turn deadlier. Read first put forward the theory 15 years ago. Now, in a new paper, he presents evidence that that is what happened with the virus causing Marek's disease, an infectious disease in chickens. Read acknowledges that the effect has never been seen with human vaccines, but he argues that future vaccines that prevent disease rather than infection could have the same effect. Other researchers say that no general conclusions should be drawn from the paper. Even if he turns out to be right, the study offers no support whatsoever for those who oppose vaccination, Read stresses. If "leaky" vaccines are proven safe and effective, they should be used, he says, but perhaps with closer monitoring and additional measures to reduce transmission, such as bed nets for malaria.

And for all the solid risk management in the West, China, a country where:

- SARS-1 leaked twice from a lab,

- which re-sentences Australian citizens to a death penalty as diplomatic punishment for Australia wanting joint investigation into the origin of a disease with still unknown zoonotic basis

- which would not allow WHO full access, and put information blackout its scientists

- informed the world way too late of an upcoming pandemic, pressuring the WHO to geopolitics and trade instead of world health.

That country will vaccinate a billion people with a leaky vaccine that skipped a trial with a poorly estimated 50.5% efficiency. Risky as all-living hell.

Made way more complicated that it basically depends on what China did to restart Wuhan or Russia did to push through Sputnik (How much did these vaccines shed? Poor answers right now!). All of America can be mRNA while SARS-nCov keeps evolving elsewhere, just one flight away importing it. Surefire way to get vaccinated though :)

Maybe China can help with a cite. They did have a 5-6 month head start and first encountered: brain-blood barrier pass, blood cloths and brain/lung aneurisms, reinfection, patient 0, airborne COVID, effect of mask wearing, pets getting infected, and more.

Too bad they don't allow the WHO full access to investigate, nor share critical information with the rest of the world, now suffering thousands of deaths. Most likely is a lab leak accident (Israel, UK, and US all said as much!). But unfortunately, the "China Virus" has become a political issue, and you won't find cites in the popular media anymore. Just articles about xenophobic conspiracy theories, and to listen to health experts when they tell you masks are not protective, go eat at China Town to show your support, don't worry about losing weight, and that vitamin D deficiency is a hoax.

You are correct. The pandemic may end after about 20-30 months, but this novel coronavirus will stick around. It is going to be a community virus, such as the Spanish flu turned into seasonal influenza. People pushed back hard against the experts when they started talking about preparing for herd immunity and 70%+ infected. So, this messaging has become more careful.

A few months later the debate will turn to this being leaky vaccines (vaccinated still shed virus, but may not get really sick). Officially, this is also: We just don't know, we are monitoring it. But all the monkeys showed shedding. Trial participants showed shedding. This is a leaky vaccine. What happened to the targeted disease, when we used a leaky vaccine in life stock can be read here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marek%27s_disease

Edit: I'd like a single expert predicting that our current vaccines will eradicate novel coronavirus. That would prove the downvoted post wrong. You'll find many experts agreeing that novel coronavirus is going to mutate and live among humans for a long long time after the crisis is over. Facts, people.

Denmark has seen a steady increase in immigration over the past 30 years, with the majority of new immigrants originating from non-Western countries. As of 2014, more than 8 percent of the population of Denmark consists of immigrants. The population of immigrants is approximately 476,059, excluding Danish born descendants of immigrants to Denmark. This recent shift in demographics has posed challenges to the nation as it attempts to address religious and cultural difference, employment gaps, education of both immigrants and their descendants, spatial segregation, crime rates and language abilities.

If the capitalist rightists only admitted that it likes to import cheap non-unionized labor to get factory rich. Instead it flirts with xenophobia (imported labour problems unequally damages low-middle class blue-collar jobs so these vote right), and the left becomes pro-immigration by opposition and because it is progressive, unwilling to even name the problems. Why is that? Too many levels above my understanding.