I know that looking at facts and data is important on this board:

https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-people-or-nature-open-pandoras-box-at-wuhan/

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Proponents of natural emergence have an up-hill task to explain all the features of SARS2's furin cleavage site. They have to postulate a recombination event at a site on the virus's genome where recombinations are rare, and the insertion of a 12-nucleotide sequence with a double arginine codon unknown in the beta-coronavirus repertoire, at the only site in the genome that would significantly expand the virus's infectivity.

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Quote:

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In the case of SARS1, researchers have documented the successive changes in its spike protein as the virus evolved step by step into a dangerous pathogen. After it had gotten from bats into civets, there were six further changes in its spike protein before it became a mild pathogen in people. After a further 14 changes, the virus was much better adapted to humans, and with a further four, the epidemic took off.
But when you look for the fingerprints of a similar transition in SARS2, a strange surprise awaits. The virus has changed hardly at all, at least until recently. From its very first appearance, it was well adapted to human cells. Researchers led by Alina Chan of the Broad Institute compared SARS2 with late stage SARS1, which by then was well adapted to human cells, and found that the two viruses were similarly well adapted. "By the time SARS-CoV-2 was first detected in late 2019, it was already pre-adapted to human transmission to an extent similar to late epidemic SARS-CoV," they wrote.
Even those who think lab origin unlikely agree that SARS2 genomes are remarkably uniform. Baric writes that "early strains identified in Wuhan, China, showed limited genetic diversity, which suggests that the virus may have been introduced from a single source."
A single source would of course be compatible with lab escape, less so with the massive variation and selection which is evolution's hallmark way of doing business.
The uniform structure of SARS2 genomes gives no hint of any passage through an intermediate animal host, and no such host has been identified in nature.
Proponents of natural emergence suggest that SARS2 incubated in a yet-to-be found human population before gaining its special properties. Or that it jumped to a host animal outside China.
All these conjectures are possible, but strained. Proponents of a lab leak have a simpler explanation.

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I appreciate the hard job TexAgs mods do, but I was shocked the first post was deleted. The article itself is obviously not conspiracy tripe, is highly informative, and is relevant to this board. I think it's important. So I softened some language and figured I try again.

Wade isn't some crank

cone said:

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Wade isn't some crank

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No, but his organization has spent the last 75 years telling the world that we are minutes away from a nuclear holocaust. So saying that careless humans are the cause of world destruction is kind of in his wheelhouse....

amercer said:

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cone said:

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Wade isn't some crank

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No, but his organization has spent the last 75 years telling the world that we are minutes away from a nuclear holocaust. So saying that careless humans are the cause of world destruction is kind of in his wheelhouse....

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organization?

i thought the OG article was a freelance medium post

at this point what difference does it make?

when you know you're over the target

It should be discussed on if it was lab made for safety/inspection reasons so it does not happen again. The USA and Chinese CDC departments have worked together for years (with a lot of US funding) so if they are not following proper protocol things need to change.

Then it comes on whether we should be trying to come up with more dangerous diseases in hope of saving the lives in the future. The 1972 Biological Weapons Convention banned "Never under any circumstances to develop, produce, stockpile, acquire, or retain biological weapons". Technically several nations like USA, Russia, Iran, and China are not following this, one of the provisions is if something does get released the country where it came from has to assist those where it spread. In other words China should be responsible, monetary and other assistance, to pretty much every other country in the world.

Almost all countries are not better off than they were pre-Covid and no one has held China responsible. Did they release it on purpose or did it somehow escape? This is worth looking into. I think we all know China will lie and do anything they can to look innocent but I would be for putting the pressure on them in hopes of this not happening again.

cone said:

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at this point what difference does it make?

when you know you're over the target

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Says Noah Smith, of the Washington Post:

Education: University of Michigan, B.A. in Anthropology Noah Smith is a journalist focused on the business, political and cultural implications of video games.

Noah needs to go back to his Atari in the garage so the grown-ups can talk.

amercer said:

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cone said:

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Wade isn't some crank

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No, but his organization has spent the last 75 years telling the world that we are minutes away from a nuclear holocaust. So saying that careless humans are the cause of world destruction is kind of in his wheelhouse....

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It is a logical fallacy to to judge something as either good or bad on the basis of where it comes from, or from whom it came. Is there a factual refutation of the evidence set forth in this article?

"The uniform structure of SARS2 genomes gives no hint of any passage through an intermediate animal host, and no such host has been identified in nature."

I have been very intrigued by this article, mostly because the author has no medical research or virology background and most of what he says is not sourced to other researchers but are from him directly.

I am not saying this to shoot the messenger. I have so little domain knowledge on this subject that I am trying not to be completely stupid on the matter. I usually want to understand the technical debate a reporter like this one is sourcing for comments.

I did finally notice a few pushbacks on his claims as being misleading, specifically from a guy at the Scripps Institute.

The whole "Furin Cleavage" thing

https://andersen-lab.com/secrets/data/sars-cov-2-origins/

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When we performed our analyses, the polybasic cleavage site we identified was predicted, but we now know it's functional and likely plays a role in SARS-CoV-2 pathogenesis. This site is novel among SARS-like coronaviruses, however, these sites can be found all across the coronavirus family, including the exact PRRAR (found in feline coronaviruses). When we wrote our paper, we predicted that related viruses may be found with insertions (if not necessarily polybasic sites) are the S1/S2 junction, and indeed RmYN02 - a SARS-like coronavirus found in bats - has an insertion at this junction. Similar to the SARS-CoV-2 RBD, the polybasic cleavage site is therefore a common feature observed during the evolution of coronaviruses.

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Basically he says the two "smoking gun" type observations are pretty common among coronaviruses and should not be viewed as conclusive evidence of a human source for the COVID.

I think that's a really good way to approach this article, Windy City. Even if he overstates some of his technical arguments, though, what he reveals about the connections between the scientists who came out so strongly against the "lab created" theory and their ties to the Wuhan clinic make it difficult for laymen like me to take their arguments at face value, especially given the way they dissembled some of the facts.

Also, for a laymen like me, just the fact that the point of origin for the virus was the city where this lab operates is itself mildly suspicious. There is a lot of evidence in this article that the experts in the field haven't been forthright with the facts. One need not be a conspiracy theorist to recognize that, and that evidence remains despite potential counterarguments to some more technical arguments in the article.

I predict that eventually history will show Fauci's actions and judgments to be heavily compromised by conflicts of interest, perhaps both foreign and domestic.

Windy City Ag said:

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Quote:

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Also, for a laymen like me, just the fact that the point of origin for the virus was the city where this lab operates is itself mildly suspicious. There is a lot of evidence in this article that the experts in the field haven't been forthright with the facts. One need not be a conspiracy theorist to recognize that, and that evidence remains despite potential counterarguments to some more technical arguments in the article.

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I think all of the above is true. I can't fathom how you can just rule out some man made angle by 24 hours of thought. A better approach would have been to weigh the two scenarios and come up with the most probable based on the evidence available.

Ultimately, I think any grand conclusion is going to by stymied by a lack of disclosure on the part of the Chinese government. They don't have to be behind something incredibly nefarious to want to avoid investigation. That entity is not big on criticism and reform in general.

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Agree. I have a Ph.D. in chemistry, but I am a layperson with respect to this area of science. However, I have participated in many root cause investigations, and my training in logic is heavily rooted in Occam's Razor, which tells us that the simplest explanation is most likely correct. In the case of Covid, the simplest explanation was ruled out with lightning-fast alacrity. That stinks to high heaven in every area of science.

P.U.T.U said:

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It should be discussed on if it was lab made for safety/inspection reasons so it does not happen again. The USA and Chinese CDC departments have worked together for years (with a lot of US funding) so if they are not following proper protocol things need to change.

Then it comes on whether we should be trying to come up with more dangerous diseases in hope of saving the lives in the future. The 1972 Biological Weapons Convention banned "Never under any circumstances to develop, produce, stockpile, acquire, or retain biological weapons". Technically several nations like USA, Russia, Iran, and China are not following this, one of the provisions is if something does get released the country where it came from has to assist those where it spread. In other words China should be responsible, monetary and other assistance, to pretty much every other country in the world.

Almost all countries are not better off than they were pre-Covid and no one has held China responsible. Did they release it on purpose or did it somehow escape? This is worth looking into. I think we all know China will lie and do anything they can to look innocent but I would be for putting the pressure on them in hopes of this not happening again.

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This is where the blackmail issues with Fauci could be hiding. We help China with their cover-up, and they agree not to tell everybody what we've got in our labs. Conflict of interest all over the place when you're playing cloak and dagger.

Quid pro quo, Clarice.

The only explanation to China recovering so quickly, and having the confidence to do so, is that they already knew everything there is the know about the virus.

Their vaccine is likely not a vaccine, but rather an actual cure.

And now evidence that 3 workers at the Wuhan lab wen to the hospital in November 2019. China and the US CDC are supposed to share information but China has been silent for well over a year now. At this time we need to act like China is responsible for it and pressure them. As of April 2020 they did admit they were short staffed and needed more funding (funny how a country that prints money more than we do and has several empty, newly built cities is asking for money from the USA).

3 workers sick with what?

But in the end we will never know, most countries, including the USA, have stopped any investigations into the cause in the past few months Money talks

That, IMO, is absolutely the most horrifying conclusion that I have heard of the origins of COVID19. The authors clearly believe that there was an intentional coverup. It is not hard to believe that the Chinese efforts to shut down travel within China while doing nothing about international travel, was an intentional act. The question is was this, from its inception, an act of biological warfare?