COVID-19/Coronavirus thread

[southsider2k5]

1 hour ago, WhiteSoxFan1993 said:

For just about any insane thing you could make up about COVID-19, there are people who believe it.

There are stories circulating now indicating that researchers in the Wuhan lab got sick and had to be hospitalized in Nov 2019, so that does seem to support the theory that the virus originated in the lab, but does not support any intent.

Or, this virus was circulating long before the Chinese realized or acknowledged it, and these people ran across it just like others in the same city did.

[StrangeSox]

You can't conclusively rule out lab leak, but I think virologists outside of a few cranks have pretty conclusively ruled out it being engineered.

[raBBit]

I am sure China undermined any investigation into the matter because they had nothing to hide.

[StrangeSox]

You don't need any information from China whatsoever for what they'd be looking for as far as markers of human engineering.

[raBBit]

22 minutes ago, StrangeSox said:

You don't need any information from China whatsoever for what they'd be looking for as far as markers of human engineering.

I didn't say anything about human engineering you did. 

[StrangeSox]

That would be the bio-engineering/bio-weapon part rather than potentially having got a sample of SARS-CoV2 in the wild, brought it back to the lab, and then it accidentally leaked out. Just clarifying. "The matter" was unspecified/unclear in your post.

[raBBit]

54 minutes ago, StrangeSox said:

That would be the bio-engineering/bio-weapon part rather than potentially having got a sample of SARS-CoV2 in the wild, brought it back to the lab, and then it accidentally leaked out. Just clarifying. "The matter" was unspecified/unclear in your post.

I posted about the media's 180 regarding the potential lab leak that was previously debunked by supposed top media orgs but is now being accepted.

Diplomats had said in 2018 that the US needed to watch the Wuhan Institute because of safety concerns. 

[StrangeSox]

 

[The Beast]

7 hours ago, raBBit said:

I posted about the media's 180 regarding the potential lab leak that was previously debunked by supposed top media orgs but is now being accepted.

Diplomats had said in 2018 that the US needed to watch the Wuhan Institute because of safety concerns. 

Hugh Hewitt believed that the media is covering up for not investigating this possibility last year. He believed that the media did this so it would hurt Trump.

I’m personally open to the possibility that there was a lab leak but I don’t know if the leak was intentional or if we will ever know if it was.

[caulfield12]

17 hours ago, raBBit said:

I posted about the media's 180 regarding the potential lab leak that was previously debunked by supposed top media orgs but is now being accepted.

Diplomats had said in 2018 that the US needed to watch the Wuhan Institute because of safety concerns. 

It hasn’t been proven in any conclusive way...even the lab or hospital reports from those three researchers who were supposedly hospitalized could be accurate or fabricated, and there’s no proof of that either, (just an allegation or accusation), it could have been the flu or strep throat or any of a million things since everyone goes to the hospital here for even a slight temperature, coughing or sore throat.   Just like if 3 out of 200 employees at your company were sick at the same time, does that mean anything?   People in research labs can’t have a regular cold instead of carrying or incubating a nefarious bioterrorism weapon?  
 

Playing this out, they were completely prescient enough to know that the Trump administration would completely screw up the response for well over a year, crippling the economy in the process?    Then if it was in the lab, why wouldn’t they immediately have their own vaccine or antidote to save the rest of the world instead of coming in a terribly disappointing 4th or 5th to the US, UK, Germany and even Russia in the mRNA vaccine race?   The Chinese mRNA vaccine will be at least a year late coming online, if its even granted EUA by the WHO.

[raBBit]

2 hours ago, caulfield12 said:

It hasn’t been proven in any conclusive way...even the lab or hospital reports from those three researchers who were supposedly hospitalized could be accurate or fabricated, and there’s no proof of that either, (just an allegation or accusation), it could have been the flu or strep throat or any of a million things since everyone goes to the hospital here for even a slight temperature, coughing or sore throat.   Just like if 3 out of 200 employees at your company were sick at the same time, does that mean anything?   People in research labs can’t have a regular cold instead of carrying or incubating a nefarious bioterrorism weapon?  
 

Playing this out, they were completely prescient enough to know that the Trump administration would completely screw up the response for well over a year, crippling the economy in the process?    Then if it was in the lab, why wouldn’t they immediately have their own vaccine or antidote to save the rest of the world instead of coming in a terribly disappointing 4th or 5th to the US, UK, Germany and even Russia in the mRNA vaccine race?   The Chinese mRNA vaccine will be at least a year late coming online, if its even granted EUA by the WHO.

Can’t follow a lot of this but keep shilling for China. You’d fit in in DC. 

[caulfield12]

1 hour ago, raBBit said:

Can’t follow a lot of this but keep shilling for China. You’d fit in in DC. 

Ultimately, what do you want?

A war?

To force China, Russia, North Korea and Iran together?

Will you join the military to fight, because you feel so strongly that China is an existential threat to the future of America?

 

This kind of thinking is what led to World War Two...do you really think Germany wants to be forced to pick a side when they believe China is a stronger economic partner, simply due to the number of cars they export, or the 5G networks they want to build?  
 

Trump’s solution of going it alone was getting nowhere.  There’s 10x as much pressure now on China than under Trump.  Trump abandoned traditional US allies that didn’t want China to take over the Trans Pacific Trade Agreement.  The EU is now mostly united against China...Trump only threatened and pissed off US allies, for what purpose?  
 

And, in the end, if India, China and the US can’t work together on climate change and protecting the planet, everyone eventually will suffer the grave consequences.

[Jack Parkman]

2 hours ago, raBBit said:

Can’t follow a lot of this but keep shilling for China. You’d fit in in DC. 

Dude, Caufield lives in China. It's dangerous to criticize the government there. Doesn't want to get arrested. Take it with a grain of salt. I'm sure that if he wrote something super critical they could track his IP address and go take him away if they wanted to. 

Edited May 26, 2021 by Jack Parkman

[greg775]

On 5/25/2021 at 4:21 AM, tray said:

Do some believe that the Covid-19 virus was developed as a bio=weapon by China and that it's release was intentional ?

I'm asking.

 

 

 

 

 

Of course some people believe that. Some people believe China and Russia are up to no good regarding their rival, the USA and regarding possible world domination. I watch some Australian TV and they have given up on the USA as a superpower friend who will help them if China ever attacks. They say we are no longer a superpower, in fact, we are behind China, Russia and N. Korea. Of course some believe we have enemies. Will I give my opinion? Heck no I won't discuss such issues .... not in 2021. EVER.

Edited May 26, 2021 by greg775

[greg775]

4 hours ago, caulfield12 said:

There’s 10x as much pressure now on China than under Trump.  

I sure hope this is true. I don't see it but I trust Caulfield. I won't comment on how I see things. Would be against board rules I'd think.

Edited May 26, 2021 by greg775

[raBBit]

5 hours ago, Jack Parkman said:

Dude, Caufield lives in China. It's dangerous to criticize the government there. Doesn't want to get arrested. Take it with a grain of salt. I'm sure that if he wrote something super critical they could track his IP address and go take him away if they wanted to. 

I am not asking him to criticize the government. There's not reason anyone should be supporting and/or defending China. 

[Jack Parkman]

3 minutes ago, raBBit said:

I am not asking him to criticize the government. There's not reason anyone should be supporting and/or defending China. 

No, there isn't....unless you live there like he does. 

[raBBit]

1 minute ago, Jack Parkman said:

No, there isn't....unless you live there like he does. 

He doesn't have to respond to every post. I imagine he knows better than you what he can and cannot say re: the CCP. He willingly chose to live there, he always has and I imagine will continue to make his own decisions on what's acceptable to post and what isn't. 

[caulfield12]

“Here we report the identification of SARS-CoV-2-related coronaviruses in Malayan pangolins (Manis javanica) seized in anti-smuggling operations in southern China. Metagenomic sequencing identified pangolin-associated coronaviruses that belong to two sub-lineages of SARS-CoV-2-related coronaviruses, including one that exhibits strong similarity in the receptor-binding domain to SARS-CoV-2. The discovery of multiple lineages of pangolin coronavirus and their similarity to SARS-CoV-2 suggests that pangolins should be considered as possible hosts in the emergence of new coronaviruses and should be removed from wet markets to prevent zoonotic transmission.”

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2169-0

Is it possible that researchers got sick in the lab, and spread it from there to the hospital/s?

Sure.

Is it possible it spread through the wet market, the original theory?

Sure.

Or that it is somehow connected to the illegal trade of pangolins between China, Vietnam and Cambodia?

Sure.

And bats/caves in southern or southwestern China?

Sure.

That China manufactured it as a bio weapon  to take over the world?

Much less likely?  Why unleash it on their own population?  Why make it highly transmissible but roughly only 3-5x worse than the common flu and something that impacts, what, 0.004-0.006% of world populations?   Why wouldn’t it be manufactured to be more like Ebola, SARs or MERs?   Or like releasing the Bubonic Plague/Black Death again?

[StrangeSox]

The general expert consensus remains "lab leak is technically possible but a highly unlikely source; we don't currently and will likely never have enough information to conclusively rule it out. Natural origin remains the most likely explanation" and "human-engineered source is extremely, extremely unlikely and we can tell that from DNA sequencing lacking any signatures of human manipulation." I'm not sure what's driving the spin-up of all the lab-leak hypothesizing in the media lately, but it's not like there's been any new findings one way or the other on that front.

 

e: if you want to listen to a discussion/interview between virologists including some who are doing the WHO investigations into the origins of SARS-CoV2, you can watch/listen here:

 

I do think it's funny that someone said China values the lives of their people less, given that they had a few thousand deaths while other countries that had powerful politicians insist it was "just the flu" and "would be gone by Easter (2020)" have had hundreds of thousands of deaths.

Edited May 27, 2021 by StrangeSox

[raBBit]

3 hours ago, StrangeSox said:

The general expert consensus remains "lab leak is technically possible but a highly unlikely source; we don't currently and will likely never have enough information to conclusively rule it out. Natural origin remains the most likely explanation" and "human-engineered source is extremely, extremely unlikely and we can tell that from DNA sequencing lacking any signatures of human manipulation." I'm not sure what's driving the spin-up of all the lab-leak hypothesizing in the media lately, but it's not like there's been any new findings one way or the other on that front.

  

e: if you want to listen to a discussion/interview between virologists including some who are doing the WHO investigations into the origins of SARS-CoV2, you can watch/listen here:

 

I do think it's funny that someone said China values the lives of their people less, given that they had a few thousand deaths while other countries that had powerful politicians insist it was "just the flu" and "would be gone by Easter (2020)" have had hundreds of thousands of deaths.

You should move to China and go visit the Uighurs if China is so much better. 

[ron883]

3 hours ago, StrangeSox said:

The general expert consensus remains "lab leak is technically possible but a highly unlikely source; we don't currently and will likely never have enough information to conclusively rule it out. Natural origin remains the most likely explanation" and "human-engineered source is extremely, extremely unlikely and we can tell that from DNA sequencing lacking any signatures of human manipulation." I'm not sure what's driving the spin-up of all the lab-leak hypothesizing in the media lately, but it's not like there's been any new findings one way or the other on that front.

 

e: if you want to listen to a discussion/interview between virologists including some who are doing the WHO investigations into the origins of SARS-CoV2, you can watch/listen here:

 

I do think it's funny that someone said China values the lives of their people less, given that they had a few thousand deaths while other countries that had powerful politicians insist it was "just the flu" and "would be gone by Easter (2020)" have had hundreds of thousands of deaths.

The fact that you honestly believe this is concerning. There's absolutely zero chance they only had a few thousand death from covid, given their population size and the fact that it started there...

Edited May 27, 2021 by ron883

[StrangeSox]

They locked down using strict measures very, very hard. We have dozens of countries worth of examples of what happens when COVID is spreading unchecked. It's not something that can be completely covered up. There's no evidence of there being tens of thousands, let alone hundreds of thousand or millions of deaths they'd need to have had to be on the per capita scale with a whole lot of other countries. They could be hiding their deaths by two orders of magnitude and they'd still be below average in deaths/1m pop. The official count in China is something like 4.5k deaths. I'm sure the actual deaths are higher because it can take years to go back and comb through all the data you need from an epidemeological level and make good estimates on the actual total impact. That'll be true in China just as it'll be true nearly everywhere else. But there simply is not anything to back up the idea that it spread throughout China. COVID fucks up areas bad and relatively fast when it's uncontrolled. China's own press is restrictive, but it's not North Korea-levels of blackhole of information ever able to get out.

 

45 minutes ago, raBBit said:

You should move to China and go visit the Uighurs if China is so much better. 

I didn't say anything it being "so much better," but the post I was referring to stunk of the infamous Westmoreland quote: "The Oriental doesn't put the same high price on life as does a Westerner. Life is plentiful, life is cheap in the Orient. And as the philosophy of the Orient expresses it: Life is not important." It's an old trope. You can criticize life under their political system for many things, but their response to COVID-19 isn't exactly strong evidence of not caring if citizens live or die. It's possible to comment one aspect or another of a country and how they approached something without it being a comment on the country in general or any philosophical or ideological positions..

 

 

Anyway, if you want to hear actual experts with specific background in coronavirus monitoring who have been on the ground in China/Wuhan, listen to the video I posted. They discuss in detail what they've found in their investigations regarding potential origins and how it originally spread in and out of Wuhan. Give me some hard science, not unsubstantiated speculation and hypotheticals.

Edited May 27, 2021 by StrangeSox

[caulfield12]

3 hours ago, StrangeSox said:

The general expert consensus remains "lab leak is technically possible but a highly unlikely source; we don't currently and will likely never have enough information to conclusively rule it out. Natural origin remains the most likely explanation" and "human-engineered source is extremely, extremely unlikely and we can tell that from DNA sequencing lacking any signatures of human manipulation." I'm not sure what's driving the spin-up of all the lab-leak hypothesizing in the media lately, but it's not like there's been any new findings one way or the other on that front.

 

e: if you want to listen to a discussion/interview between virologists including some who are doing the WHO investigations into the origins of SARS-CoV2, you can watch/listen here:

 

I do think it's funny that someone said China values the lives of their people less, given that they had a few thousand deaths while other countries that had powerful politicians insist it was "just the flu" and "would be gone by Easter (2020)" have had hundreds of thousands of deaths.

One of the big stories last year was about the “hidden” deaths....based on the number of funerals (more accurately, the burying of ashes/urns) held in early April.  The number was something like 42,500, compared to the normal death rate for a city of 11+ million of roughly 30k.

No doubt an undercount because the first 2-3 weeks many died before bring properly tested.

But India’s going to end up in an undercount with over a year to prepare in the hundreds of thousands if not millions. They are supposedly a democracy as well as a US ally against China. The fact that 70-75% of the world’s drugs are manufactured there is even scarier...especially for the Covax plan to vaccinate the second/third world developing countries.

Edited May 27, 2021 by caulfield12

[caulfield12]

6 minutes ago, StrangeSox said:

They locked down using strict measures very, very hard. We have dozens of countries worth of examples of what happens when COVID is spreading unchecked. It's not something that can be completely covered up. There's no evidence of there being tens of thousands, let alone hundreds of thousand or millions of deaths they'd need to have had to be on the per capita scale with a whole lot of other countries. They could be hiding their deaths by two orders of magnitude and they'd still be below average in deaths/1m pop.

I didn't say anything it being "so much better," but the post I was referring to stunk of the infamous Westmoreland quote: "The Oriental doesn't put the same high price on life as does a Westerner. Life is plentiful, life is cheap in the Orient. And as the philosophy of the Orient expresses it: Life is not important." It's an old trope. You can criticize life under their political system for many things, but their response to COVID-19 isn't exactly strong evidence of not caring if citizens live or die.

 

 

Anyway, if you want to hear actual experts with specific background in coronavirus monitoring who have been on the ground in China/Wuhan, listen to the video I posted. They discuss in detail what they've found in their investigations regarding potential origins and how it originally spread in and out of Wuhan. Give me some hard science, not unsubstantiated speculation and hypotheticals.

And this was true across the board.  South Korea.  Vietnam.  Japan (a bit of a mess now).  Taiwan.  Singapore.  Thailand. Hong Kong.

It’s 50% cultural memory of SARS, 25% authoritarian systems (not much different from the US in 2017-2020), and 25% the wearing of masks already for protection against pollution/dust particles/cold or flu.

 

Edited May 27, 2021 by caulfield12