This effort will increase the number of hate crimes no doubt about that

  • aerides [comrade/them]
    ·
    edit-2
    4 years ago

    I'm gonna get banned for this but it's really obvious what actually happened and why there is so much handwringing over it. the lab isn't a trump conspiracy, it's the occam's razor explanation. also consider that the "natural origins" theory is racist as well - it requires some chinese person to eat a random wild animal. no one has ever been able to prove there are bats at the wuhan seafood market.

    anyway this is totally what happened and I'll die on this hill even if it makes me a lib.

    • a weakly infectious form of COVID19 was collected and stored in the Wuhan lab (this is a fact)
    • the CDC, under Trump and headed by Fauci, unbanned funding for gain of function research (making viruses more contagious to create vaccines ahead of time) (this is also a fact)
    • the wuhan lab used US money approved by Fauci (this is a fact) to perform GOF research (this is highly probable) on the stored virus with the intent of creating a broad spectrum coronavirus vaccine, not a weapon (this is the only reason that makes sense)
    • it escaped

    the reason this is so contentious is that neither China nor the US wants the full truth to come out but if we ignore what actually happened it is going to happen again VERY SOON

    edit: this is also the reason fauci always looks so god damned uncomfortable

    edit2: this will also never gain traction because the idea that Fauci is personally responsible for the pandemic is way, way too convenient

      • aerides [comrade/them]
        ·
        edit-2
        4 years ago

        it's really not though. The Wuhan Institute of Virology studies coronaviruses by making them more contagious, funded by the US. That's a fact.

        The "natural explanation" is that somebody in Wuhan ate a bat from 1500km away and there's no evidence for that either.

        The stakes for getting this wrong are whether or not we have another once-in-a-century pandemic in 2025.

          • aerides [comrade/them]
            ·
            4 years ago

            please outline the latest version of the natural theory along with evidence, because I am honestly under the impression that it makes way less sense than the lab leak. willing to change my mind.

              • aerides [comrade/them]
                ·
                edit-2
                4 years ago

                so the natural hypothesis requires an intermediate host to make sense, but we don't know what the intermediate host is and have no leads. if only the natural hypothesis is pursued, we will probably never actually know what happened.

                is that correct?

                  • aerides [comrade/them]
                    ·
                    4 years ago

                    "we'll never know. definitely don't look at this lab at ground zero that was making coronaviruses more infectious"

                    You see why I find this hard to believe?

    • Chapo_is_Red [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Occam's razor is when I assume something that has never happened before is, in fact, what happened.

      • aerides [comrade/them]
        ·
        4 years ago

        scientists have been warning against gain of function research for decades, because it could create an artificial pandemic. trump unbanned gain of function research. the wuhan lab conducted it on coronaviruses.

        anthropogenic climate change has never happened before either, my dude

        • Chapo_is_Red [he/him]
          ·
          4 years ago

          I'm not claiming its impossible, but simply stating it is possible is not the same thing as "Occam's Razor".

          You need evidence like documentation showing it was leaked, or evidence that COVID-19 was manipulated in a lab.

          Regarding human caused climate change: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47063973

          • aerides [comrade/them]
            ·
            4 years ago

            COVID-19 has not been found in the wild outside humans. the closest virus anyone can find was collected in Yunan and stored in Wuhan. that's circumstantial evidence, which I know everyone hates, but it is in fact admissible in court.

            as far as I am aware there is no evidence for the natural theory, circumstantial or otherwise.

            • TheCaconym [any]
              ·
              4 years ago

              as far as I am aware there is no evidence for the natural theory, circumstantial or otherwise.

              You're wrong of course - as the twitter link quoting tons of studies posted by @iKarli shows.

              • aerides [comrade/them]
                ·
                4 years ago

                I read that entire thing before posting here. Pull out some of the evidence from there and explain it to me.

                hint: you can't, because all this thread actually says is "even if we proved the natural theory lab-leakers wouldn't believe it". she does not present anything convincing, she merely refutes strawmen

    • ssjmarx [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      the “natural origins” theory is racist as well

      "it was on an animal, and jumped to a human, like dozens of highly infectious diseases have done in the past" is racist? Natural origin doesn't require a person to eat a bat, that was wild speculation from the very beginning because they used the term "wet market" instead of "butcher's shop" and it triggered all kinds of orientalism in people.

      • Gothouse [none/use name]
        ·
        4 years ago

        Wet markets are what they're called. It's a gigantic barn with tons of stalls and questionable sanitary conditions. They hose off the concrete floors so they're wet. A butcher's shop is a shop that handles meat, China has those too. They're more expensive than the wet markets.

        • ssjmarx [he/him]
          ·
          4 years ago

          "wet market" is a term that applies to any store that sells meat, as opposed to a "dry market" which does not.

          • Gothouse [none/use name]
            ·
            4 years ago

            Huh? No, wet markets are a specific kind of market that's everywhere in China. There are different licenses for those kinds of businesses, they're a lot easier to qualify for. One reason they always have such shady practices. There's no such term for "dry market", they just use the word shop or supermarket.

            • ssjmarx [he/him]
              ·
              4 years ago

              So the first time I read the term I looked it up on wikipedia and this is how it's described:

              A wet market (also called a public market[4] or a traditional market[5]) is a marketplace selling fresh meat, fish, produce, and other perishable goods as distinguished from "dry markets" that sell durable goods such as fabric and electronics.[9] These include a wide variety of markets, such as farmers' markets, fish markets, and wildlife markets.[13] Not all wet markets sell live animals,[16] but the term wet market is sometimes used to signify a live animal market in which vendors slaughter animals upon customer purchase,[20] such as is done with poultry in Hong Kong.[21] Wet markets are common in many parts of the world,[25] notably in China, Southeast Asia, and South Asia. They often play critical roles in urban food security due to factors of pricing, freshness of food, social interaction, and local cultures.[26]

              So if there's a connotation to the term that I'm not aware of then I just don't know it, but the impression I got was that it was just a place that sold meat.

    • AntipastoAktion [they/them]
      ·
      4 years ago

      edit: this is also the reason fauci always looks so god damned uncomfortable

      And so, in order to hide his direct complicity in this (unevidenced) theory, he instead does everything in his power to bring further attention to the lab in Wuhan... because?

      • aerides [comrade/them]
        ·
        edit-2
        4 years ago

        neither fauci nor the CDC have done that, only a former head of the CDC. also nobody is hiding anything, he approved GOF research funding for the Wuhan lab and I'm sure you can pull up public records about this

        ask this: why didn't trump push the lab leak theory harder? isn't it weird that he didn't seize on that?

        • AntipastoAktion [they/them]
          ·
          4 years ago

          Trump has the attention span of a gnat, motherfucker probably doesn't even remember China exists as a country until somebody reminds him of it. He didn't push the lab leak theory because nobody reminded him there was even a lab to begin with.

          Like I get it and all but there's literally no evidence for this theory. If, and I want to put a big ol' stress on the IF there, this leaked from a US funded lab, you don't think China wouldn't be all over that shit? Comrade Chen would be out there bodying half the state department on Twitter if the virus came from a US-backed lab in China.

        • howdyoudoo [comrade/them]
          ·
          edit-2
          4 years ago

          ask this: why didn’t trump push the lab leak theory harder? isn’t it weird that he didn’t seize on that?

          because he knew about it, obviously.

          Nov 2019: Trump has a mysterious unscheduled hospital visit. Is released with a wrist bruise (indicating IV insertion)
          Feb 2020: Trump is caught speaking in private tapes about how the virus is super deadly
          March 2020: Trump denies the danger of the virus, and doesn't wear a mask for 7 months
          October 2020: after not wearing a mask for 7 months, Trump supposedly catches covid

          deductivists will say that nothing happened here.
          inductivists will say that Trump was injected with some type of preventatory medicine, which is why he kept shilling in public for the virus being harmless, while admitting otherwise in leaked private tapes, and also why he felt comfy being maskless for the rest of the year.

    • Elon_Musk [none/use name]
      ·
      4 years ago

      with the intent of creating a broad spectrum coronavirus vaccine

      Mission accomplished?

    • Gothouse [none/use name]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Chinese like eating exotic animals, it gives them status in front of their peers. I once saw a whole alligator in a tank in a Cantonese restaurant, no joke.