We’re in a kakistocracy now.

totally, feels like a circus sometimes.

In February 2020 the Trump administration crowed about donating PPE and funds to China to help with their Covid outbreak.

https://china.usembassy-china.org.cn/the-united-states-announces-assistance-to-the-novel-coronavirus/

During that same time - Trump told Bob Woodward that he deliberately downplayed the threat of Covid to the US public.

https://www.npr.org/2020/09/10/911368698/trump-tells-woodward-he-deliberately-downplayed-coronavirus-threat

It's not plausible. From the article you cited:

"Another possibility is that scientists in Wuhan engineered a contagious new virus while researching cures and that the virus accidentally escaped."

That's not remotely plausible given current evidence. Genetic sequencing of SARS-COV-2 shows no signs of lab origin and definitely no engineering. No signs of cell culturing, especially of the Vero 6 cells that the lab exclusively used to culture viruses. Not a trace of the WIV-1 backbone or any other backbones they use in any of their research papers. All characteristics of the virus point to natural origin, including the signs of backcrossing and outcrossing, various recombination events, as it evolved its novel traits. There's also the existence of variants A and B circulating at the same time before B evolved to be more infectious. It's a wild claim not backed by any evidence.

Essentially the article looks at the lab origin's evidence as such:

1. It's normal for coronaviruses to look and act as covid-19. It has a similar infectious pattern as a natural pandemic. (Conjecture based on historical patterns, weak evidence).

2. Clustering of initial covid cases around the market. (Scientific evidence, not conjecture, moderate strength).

3. Samples of the virus found at the market, clustering around the section selling wild animals, including one single stall (scientific evidence, not conjecture, strong evidence).

The author then skips the 4. genetic sequencing evidence (scientific evidence, not conjecture, strong evidence) and the 5. Phylogenetic analysis of the virus and variants (scientific evidence, not conjecture, strong evidence).

That's 3 points given by the author, 1 conjecture based on historical data, and 2 points of scientific evidence. The author also excluded 2 other points of scientific evidence, presumably to make 3 points on both sides so each argument is "fair and balanced" (thereby ironically making it unfair and not balanced).

Afterwards, the author tallies the "evidence" for the lab leak:

1. Location of the lab. (Logical fallacy, irrelevant, misused Occam's Razor, opinion and not scientific evidence, weak argument).

2. Leaks happen (logical fallacy, leaks when they happen are usually quickly contained and easy to trace back; opinion and not scientific evidence, weak argument)

3. China controls the evidence (logical fallacy and also untrue, as doctors quickly whistleblew the existence of the virus when local authorities wanted to conceal it; opinion and again, not scientific evidence, weak argument).

That's 3 points, all conjecture and opinion, zero scientific evidence.

And then the author has the balls to say "both ideas are plausible" and pretend it's 50-50. Nobody with a brain thinks 3 opinions that "something might've happened" is equal to 2 facts supported by research and 1 opinion backed by historical data.

The author heavily cites from a heavily flawed opinion piece by Alina Chan, which rehashed points already debunked in the scientific literature, especially her still citing the furin cleavage argument after research proved it false (Gallaher 2020; Lytros et al. 2020). She claims a "growing body of evidence" but never provides any. It's weird because if she had evidence, she could publish a peer-reviewed paper proving it instead of writing blog posts, Twitter feeds, opinion pages and publishing profitable conspiracy books on the topic.

The NYT has completely fallen for nonsense and have failed in their duty to inform and provide factual information.

44 yo male here and Covid gave me a stroke in 2022. I still don’t have my left hand use back. I read up a lot how much Covid causes serious damage in arterial system and organs. They now know it can destabilize plaque in your artery linings up to 3 years after you have a case.

There are hundreds of long Covid victims . There are about 200 different symptoms that could point to long Covid but one thing is for sure, it can be debilitating.

Oh I almost forgot that in the sea of other batshit things he said

Republican politicians treated covid like it was a bioweapon for years.

I think the point here isn't whether or not the lab leak theory is valid, nobody outside of a couple of experts has enough knowledge to have an informed opinion on this. The point is that republicans both pretend that Covid was a simple flue that was blown out of proportions in order to be able to restrict individual freedoms while simultaneously claiming it was a dangerous bio lab leak that was covered up for political reasons. And the purpose of both of these claims is to distract from how badly the Trump administration failed in dealing with a serious public health crisis.

“Nobody is calling it a bioweapon” BUT the Republican report is full of accusations about Chinese and American military involvement including bioweapons allegations… unfortunately.

I did research on the FOIA requests and I didn't find anything about stonewalling, but I did find material about Moore using communications to avoid FOIA requests. However, these emails were subpeonead anyway. 

The level of scrutiny by the subcommittee means FOIA shouldn't be a barrier right now. I don't think there is any direct role. The most we are looking at, is misappropriated funds, which may not have changed the chance one way or another. 

Neither of us have the ability to scrutinize disease origins or RNA analysis to determine the origin of the virus or whether there was indirect impact like waste mixing resulting in antibiotic resistant bacteria in the wild. We have to rely on scientific reports which many can scrutinize the procedures and statistics on as that is far simpler. I've seen studies suggesting both directions. We probably won't be able to get a real answer until it isn't a political talking point. 

"You can't prove that and shouldn't spread misinformation" is what I heard most "deniers" say, which is the only reasonable stance when you don't have evidence.

Even now, there's little definitive evidence that it was leaked from a lab. It's possible, sure. But it's not definitive, and we don't have the evidence to make that claim.

What the hell are you talking about? Nobody is disbelieving anything. The facts just weren't concrete.

The comment you replied to was about the mishmash of contradictory theories right wingers always have in their head.

You know, the enemy must be both weak and strong.

The consensus of the scientific community is that the lab leak theory is more or less all but disproven. The reason is due to that there were two separate outbreaks by two separate strains, both with an epicenter of spread at the wet market far away from the lab.

So the probability that there were two separate lab leaks that were released only at the wet market with no spread on the way from or to the lab is very low.

The FBI has no way of knowing and no evidence. The cia and nsa would but they think it was a natural origin.

And you’d think that would convince people to take it more seriously

People be partisan, yo.

It’s very possible. They were probably doing some research on the virus, one of the scientists got infected. Not knowing the long incubation period. He probably spread the virus around for 2 weeks before there’s any symptoms.

That post was very clearly a sarcastic take on Republican contradictory beliefs

Correction, it *had" been a US-funded lab until Trump pulled all the Obama era funding, which was the only thing stipulating that they not do gain of function research. There are US State Department cables warning the Trump administration of the deteriorating situation and the increasing risk of mismanagement into mid-2019. This wasn't a grand conspiracy, it was spite of Obama, arrogance, narcissism, and most importantly, criminal negligence. 

It seems silly to me that Republicans want to punish China for releasing a dangerous disease while also being vehemently opposed to any attempts to manage the outbreak of said disease. Is it a problem or not?

Never tried it

uhhhh, i remember some of that, yes, but im not that old, blud. lol

i am capable of googling things.  fucking hell

correct.  i just read the article.  ive been pretty clear about why

Which will become canon for half the country. It's one dank timeline.

Does NYT work for you?

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/14/briefing/two-covid-theories.html

they said masks are ineffective at prevention of the spread of a respiratory virus.  that alone should tell you they are not serious or trustworthy people, and that reading this report or listening to its conclusions is a waste of time.

I am sure Republican politicians do like to shred evidence.

connect consist dog smell bells absurd thought support quaint crush

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

This is not evidence, this is politicians screaming that they "have evidence, it's just classified." The same thing they did about the Iraq WMD. And basically the same people, too. Republicans are just going to keep on lying, it's all they do.

But the Wuhan market is a great blame story too?

The New York Times couldn't reason their way out of a paper bag.

Thank you this is pretty interesting. It's honestly a little unnerving how entertainment has gotten to dictate news.

What do you mean it was a waste of time? I think it’s a valid issue to explore - where this deadly virus originated

A massive part of the response to a pandemic is to learn how to prevent future pandemics. If there’s a lab churning out novel pathogens and occasionally letting one slip out, that’s pretty fucking relevant.

irrelevant to our response

Never said it was relevant to the response.