So uh... any rebuttals to this? Have always dismissed the "lab created" arguments as total bunk, but NJR makes a compelling case here that it may have been an accident. Too many coincidences here, especially Wuhan already being the center of novel coronavirus research using “gain of function” research to engineer particularly deadly viruses to study them and Daszak's conflicts of interest. Am I just going crazy?
It’s irrelevant, the function is to blame china and ramp the cold war. P.s. genetic data doesn’t suggest engineering, but accident is inherently disprovable theory, and will give headlines china lab made the virus :shrug-outta-hecks:
Yeah I've seen those studies, which makes sense. It was a natural virus, collected in the lab, and then accidentally leaked. Totally possibly, not really disprovable, and yeah will unfortunately just be used to fearmonger against China. I think NJR's article takes the right framing, as this is an NIH funded lab and therefore the US is just as, if not more so, complicit than China, but of course that won't be said anywhere.
It’s just as likely came from pangolins. Why would nominally leftist writer give time to nuance(tm) on this issue I don’t know, it’s same as handwringing about, oh saddam is also bad, but there should be another way blah blah
Again, I encourage you to read the article. I think he builds a very compelling case, and I'd be very interested in rebuttals that aren't just "this is an disprovable theory." If something like this is true, it challenges the entire paradigm of scientific research in a way not seen since the invention of nuclear weapons, and is worth asking questions about.
It don’t think it does (and I’ve read it before posting.) but what rebuttal is there, if it’s unprovable theory? Scientists in the lab didn’t have antibodies - pffft, why trust the chinese, WHO haven’t found evidence - one of the researchers has agenda (the other ones don’t count). How do you disprove this?
Fair enough. I guess you're right that there aren't any real "rebuttals" to this argument, because most of it is just stating facts and then saying, "ok based on the combination of all these facts it's not crazy to think [x]." I would hope there is some rebuttal to this because I'd very much like for it to be wrong and buried, but I think pretending it's not worth looking into is dangerous.
The rebuttal would be to find the person first infected in November and trusting antibodies data, but it would be inherently untrustworthy to western audience (cause chinese) and live as conspiracy for the rest of the century :shrug-outta-hecks:
Which is why the blame game should be focused on government fucking up the response
I think another rebuttal that I remember hearing a lot about is finding covid not from Wuhan before Wuhan, like the covid-19 samples they found in the waste waters of Brazil, Italy, and Spain from before the first reported case in Wuhan. Do you know if this was ever disproved? Not sure why nobody has really talked about this in the context of the renewed interests in covid's origins, because all that data would point to it not originating in Wuhan at all.
I think it’s generally not treated seriously, cause genetic trees of corona point to singular virus in the november, initial outbreak all had the same exact virus in wuhan, which started spreading and mutating already in february
The virus fragments found in water samples are also not necessarily covid-19 or related to it, there are dozens of coronaviruses.
Eh, this is a stretch. The function is that if this were true it would pretty much change virology as we know it - heck, it would upend scientific research standards to an extent we've never seen before.
If the best argument against taking the lab accident theory seriously is "it's more important to protect the Chinese government from bad press than to protect the Global South from future pandemics", then there isn't a good argument to dismiss it.
“if this were true, lab safety/research should significantly change” is a fair argument, unfortunately robinson is not a scientist, just as majority of journalists who will be writing about it
Yes, but as NJR points out (and the very article you linked to includes a quote from!!!), the WHO members on the ground includes Dr Peter Daszak, who has serious conflicts of interest with the investigation, and could have easily led the WHO team away from the "smoking gun."
Daszak is the head of an NGO called the EcoHealth Alliance, a “global environmental health nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting wildlife and public health from the emergence of disease.” Daszak has worked with the Wuhan Institute of Virology and Dr. Shi for years, and is even listed as the project leader on the NIH proposal to study the “spillover potential” of bat coronaviruses. His organization received $3.7 million from the NIH to study bat coronaviruses, ultimately directing $600,000 of U.S. government funds to the Wuhan Institute. Daszak is intimately connected, then, with the lab that would have been the source of a lab leak, had there been a lab leak. Now here comes the crazy part: Daszak is the only U.S. member of the WHO’s team investigating the origins of COVID-19, and has been appointed by top medical journal The Lancet to chair its team investigating the origins of the virus.
he previously worked with them so he must be a puppet of them? And you do realize the Lancet doesn't just fuck around with anyone right?
No, he is currently working with them, and is also supposed to be impartially investigating if the virus originated from there! Just connecting the dots, and I think it's very odd that this is never brought up in any mainstream media reporting when using this guy to clear the lab from possibly accidentally releasing something. If this was all out in the open, if he was like "like ok I work with them, appoint somebody else to do this" or at least some acknowledgement, I'd be happy.
Ok, let’s look at the facts here:
- This man was appointed by Trump, not someone inclined to be favorable to China
- He was one person out of 17
- he was appointed by the Lancet, one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world, so they aren’t just going to appoint anyone
- as you said, even the msm, who have every motive to slander China, yet barely pick up on it
Now let’s look at the proponents of the lab leak theory:
- Steve Bannon, who faked a paper
- Donald Trump, who says whatever crosses his tiny little brain at the moment
- the MSM, who don’t pick up on what looks like an easy gap in the armor, and who’s articles always include disclaimers like: “We have no positive evidence that the lab was involved.”
You decide who we should believe between the people above, or someone who was on the ground and approved by some of the highest medical bodies in the world
The Purpose of USAID is explicitly to topple opposition to america's empire. The Wuhan lab doesn't have "spill viruses" in its MO
Nobody’s calling him a puppet. CTRL+F the article, the word puppet isn’t there. But to deny that he has a material interest in protecting the lab’s reputation is ridiculous. Science has conflict-of-interest regulations for a reason.
And The Lancet is the same journal that ignored conflict of interest regulations to print the “vaccines cause autism” article in the 90s, so it’s not like they’re above reproach.
sure. but still:
- This man was appointed by Trump, not someone inclined to be favorable to China
- He was one person out of 17
- even the msm, who have every motive to slander China, barely pick up on it
Now let’s look at the proponents of the lab leak theory:
- Steve Bannon, who faked a paper
- Donald Trump, who says whatever crosses his tiny little brain at the moment
- the MSM, who don’t pick up on what looks like an easy gap in the armor, and who’s articles always include disclaimers like: “We have no positive evidence that the lab was involved.”
I thought the same way. This article did a good job or persuading me to at least take lab-accident theory credibly. Not accept it as fact or anything, but like - it's not a conspiracy theory. It's perfectly credible without assigning conspiratorial motives to anyone.
lab hypotheses all take a Wuhan origination for the virus as fact, but i recall quite a few challenges to that.... were those bunk or are folk pretending they didn't exist? NJR says he's not tryin to scapegoat China here but like...
I'd just read the Science mag article that was used by Reuters as a source. It states that there needs to be more investigation before we disprove the lab theory. I don't think anyone's opposed to that. NJR might not have said it but everyone knows which country will be to blame if covid escape from a lab. I don't think that means we shouldn't research it or anything. But it does mean that we need to be aware that there are certain countries that would take great pleasure in trying to prove this was lab made.
Honestly. We're spending quite a lot of time on trying to prove something that has been judged to be "extremely unlikely".
Ah yes let's cite this Wade dude multiple times.... wait the same guy who wrote a book about how Caucasian countries are rich because they are genetically superior to Black and Asian ones?
Ah yes let's trust what he has to say about China: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/16/books/nicholas-wades-a-troublesome-inheritance.html
I wonder how "compelling" this dude is...
Well wasn't there a US military unit in exchange there that November? How deep does this thing go? Riddle me that njr
