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Cont: Origins of Covid (2)

The Atheist

The Grammar Tyrant
Joined
Jul 3, 2006
Messages
36,189
TA, lomiller posts frequently inaccurate and unsupported scientific conclusions. Maybe you should read more of his posts.

I think you missed the exchange I was referring to, because science had nothing to do with it.



Continued from

here.

Posted By: jimbob
 
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I think you missed the exchange I was referring to, because science had nothing to do with it.

But it was nonsense. The argument started with an attempt to discredit the fact the pandemic started very close to several labs that were studying coronaviruses. That is significant.

That there are other labs in China doesn't negate the improbable coincidence near the WIV is where the pandemic started.

And it doesn't negate that argument (of all the gin joints) to say there are wet markets all over China.

Lomiller did descend into nonsense when he said, "if there were no Earth."

I admit I don't know what "that annoying tiger thing" is. Was that important to your sarcasm?
 
You should step back and re-read your posts some time. You are so far from making a valid argument it's downright hilarious.

What is hilarious is how consistent certain people are in this forum for declaring an argument that they can't counter "hilarious" (and then posting that annoying gif).
 
TA, lomiller posts frequently inaccurate and unsupported scientific conclusions.

I reference actual scientific papers and actual scientists who work in relevant fields instead of referencing rumors posted in magazines and the popular press the way you do.

That there are other labs in China doesn't negate the improbable coincidence near the WIV is where the pandemic started.
You've referenced at least 3 different labs at various points in the thread, including the Chinese CDC lab that the WiV doesn't have anything to do with. If there are multiple labs being accused of the same "leak" than it can't be all that improbable there is a "suspicious" lab nearby. In fact the history of new disease outbreaks is that some local lab almost always gets accused of releasing it.
 
Not sharing the database that was online and accessible until mid-Sept, 2019 would be something Shi would do under duress.

It's clear at this point China does not want SARS-CoV-2 to be the result of zoonotic crossover resulting from live animal markets. Not only did they sterilize the market and burn all the animals as soon as the outbreak was recognized. The fact that all the animals were destroyed without taking samples to look for viruses is a huge impediment to tracking down the original animal host. More recently China pulled down data from environment al samples that linked covid and animals in the market. They did similar things with SARS-CoV, trying to claim it came from outside China rather than the live animal trade.

If Dr Shi really was so compliant that she placed the wishes of the Chinese government over accurate scientific reporting of the evidence, why is is she was the one who linked SARS to live animal markets? IMO if Dr Shi was truly the pawn you claim she would never have presented evidence that points a finger at live animal markets as the source of the SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 outbreaks.
 
That's a straw man. The reference was to that paper and that paper alone. Do you think no one isolated the SARS1-related viruses from civet cats? Think no one isolated the virus that infected the 3 miners who died in Yunnan?
What about all the coronaviruses we know about that cause mild infection in people? No one could culture those? And the coronavirus that infects pigs, do we only know about these because someone identified the genomes but never replicated the viruses first?

What is your problem with common sense?


Well, yeah! I also posted evidence they lied.


How is that two ways? It's an 'AND' not an 'OR'. Shi cannot speak freely. Her government minders are indeed almost certainly blocking her from sharing that genome database.

Not sharing the database that was online and accessible until mid-Sept, 2019 would be something Shi would do under duress.

What we don't know (a lab leak hypothesis plot hole) is what moved the government to take the database offline that early. What did they know about that hiding the genome database became important? Maybe the virus leaked from the CCDC lab that was under Dr Gao. While we are all looking at the WIV maybe something else happened earlier.

And by earlier I don't mean there was a wet market exposure in Sept 2019. No super spreader event occurred until Dec.

I think it is definitive that no virus was isolated from the miners. Indeed the clinicians thought about a fungal infection.
 
That's a straw man. The reference was to that paper and that paper alone. Do you think no one isolated the SARS1-related viruses from civet cats? Think no one isolated the virus that infected the 3 miners who died in Yunnan?

What about all the coronaviruses we know about that cause mild infection in people? No one could culture those? And the coronavirus that infects pigs, do we only know about these because someone identified the genomes but never replicated the viruses first?

What is your problem with common sense?


Well, yeah! I also posted evidence they lied.


How is that two ways? It's an 'AND' not an 'OR'. Shi cannot speak freely. Her government minders are indeed almost certainly blocking her from sharing that genome database.

Not sharing the database that was online and accessible until mid-Sept, 2019 would be something Shi would do under duress.

What we don't know (a lab leak hypothesis plot hole) is what moved the government to take the database offline that early. What did they know about that hiding the genome database became important? Maybe the virus leaked from the CCDC lab that was under Dr Gao. While we are all looking at the WIV maybe something else happened earlier.

And by earlier I don't mean there was a wet market exposure in Sept 2019. No super spreader event occurred until Dec.

Changing the goal posts?

No one is talking about isolating viruses from humans or civet cats or pigs or non-coronaviruses (in particular non-Sarbecoviruses). What we are talking about is isolating coronaviruses from bats. I have posted the three papers where the three isolates of viable coronavirus were reported as being cultured. I have posted comments from other scientists commenting on the fact that isolation is difficult, and that only WIV has done this. Yet you persist in your claim that it is easy. If it is that easy you should be able to find papers reporting the isolation and growth of coronaviruses from bats, or bat fecal matter and disprove this.

It is surprising how common this problem is. No one has cultured pneumocystis (I believe there are two claims of doing so but the work could not be replicated).

The explanation for the database going off line in September is that it was being rebuilt to enable geospatial searching. Then from early 2020 WIV was subject to cyber attacks and multiple hacking attempts and the decision was made to air gap the database.

The superspreader event is a strawman. It is unnecessary to the natural cross over theory. perfectly normal transmission events would have been sufficient.
 
The superspreader event is a strawman. It is unnecessary to the natural cross over theory. perfectly normal transmission events would have been sufficient.

Another issue is that there are a large number of early cases where the patient lived near the market but had not been to the market. This is consistent with normal community spread and completely inconsistent with a superspreader event.
 
The Chinese have submitted the outcome of the analysis of the market swabs here.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06043-2
So taking positive co-locations of animal DNA with viral RNA Hominids are strongly associated with an OR 2.25 and p=0.015, but another primate is more strongly associated - Gibbon OR 5.5 p=0.04. Pigs OR 4 p=0, Cattle OR 4.6 p=0, Buffalo OR 11 p=0.015, sheep OR 5.1 p=0, goats OR 4.4 p=0.003, Deer (axis spp. asian deer) OR 10.7 p=0.001 and Deer (Odocoileus spp. white tailed deer etc.) OR 11 p=0.015. I assume these will all be associated with butchery. Interesting Deer are so strongly associated given the spread into wild deer population. Weasel family (mustids) OR 13.5 p=0.005 has the highest association. Racoon dogs are negatively associated with an OR 0.073 p=0.

Three samples had live virus (culturable) including one lineage A (early virus). Most of the rest appeared to be lineage B. One criticism of the cross over theory is that no early viral strains were isolated from the market, this now shown to be false with early SRAS-CoV-2 strains being isolated, showing transmission occurred early in the outbreak and both lineages being cultured.
 
Just an update because like last year other priorities prevail, taxes are due in 1 week and I'm behind due to my health.

Hooray for you, @Planigale, you finally looked at the earlier pages in the thread. Too bad you didn't look at the fact there were pages of discussion following the illness of the miners in Yunnan. There was evidence supporting the conclusion it was a lie when Shi claimed they died from a fungal infection. Few if any other experts support that conclusion. So why would Shi lie about that unless she was covering up what they did die from? As for the collected specimens that the WIV has, there was a long discussion about that too.

Now for the Chinese finally officially releasing the data they collected 3 years ago: the official release doesn't add more than the leak of that data revealed:

BBC: Covid origins: Chinese scientists publish long-awaited data
Some scientists say this is further evidence that the disease was initially transmitted from an infected animal to a human.

But others have urged caution in interpreting the findings and it remains unclear why it took three years for the genetic content of the samples to be made public. ...

But the Chinese researchers have pointed out that their discoveries fall short of definitive proof of how the outbreak started.
"These environmental samples cannot prove that the animals were infected," the paper explains.

The possibility remains, it adds, that the virus was brought into the market by an infected person, rather than an animal.
 
Just an update because like last year other priorities prevail, taxes are due in 1 week and I'm behind due to my health.

Hooray for you, @Planigale, you finally looked at the earlier pages in the thread. Too bad you didn't look at the fact there were pages of discussion following the illness of the miners in Yunnan. There was evidence supporting the conclusion it was a lie when Shi claimed they died from a fungal infection. Few if any other experts support that conclusion. So why would Shi lie about that unless she was covering up what they did die from? As for the collected specimens that the WIV has, there was a long discussion about that too.

Now for the Chinese finally officially releasing the data they collected 3 years ago: the official release doesn't add more than the leak of that data revealed:

BBC: Covid origins: Chinese scientists publish long-awaited data

1) You have no idea what I have or have not done do not claim that you know things you cannot know about me or my activities.

2) Neither you nor Shi are medically qualified. I am and spend most of my time working in respiratory medicine and infectious disease, I would probably qualify as an expert. The most likely cause for a pneumonia in this instance; miners being exposed to bat guano is a fungal pneumonia. I have seen no reports of positive or negative tests for fungal infections. No virus was ever isolated from the miners so the occurrence or otherwise of an unknown pneumonia is irrelevant to whether Covid-19 resulted from a leak from WIV or a natural cross over event most likely at the Wuhan wet market. The clinical presentation would not fit with Covid-19. The ages (36 - 63) and co-morbidities of the miners would not fit for them to get severe covid-19 requiring hospital admission. All six miners became unwell and three died; this is completely different from Covid-19 when you would expect most to have a mild or asymptomatic illness and perhaps only the oldest to have a significant pneumonia. The x-rays reported do not show appearances typical for covid-19. Why should Shi have tried to conceal a SARS-r CoV outbreak eight years before the pandemic? This would have been great for her, it would have brought lots more funding. The blood results from the three patients tested were negative on serology for both SARS-CoV-1 and SARS-CoV-2. So we can be fairly sure that the unknown pneumonia was not due to SARS or Covid-19. The miners are a red herring.

The problem remains that the more data comes out the more it favours a natural cross over event, and none favours an origin from WIV. All that favours WIV as a source is innuendo and co-incidence. BSL-4 laboratory - irrelevant. Research on mice with humanised lungs is irrelevant as WIV had no access to any virus that could be changed to / evolve into SARS-CoV-2. Shi lying is a circular argument; WIV must be the source otherwise why would Shi lie. Shi lied because WIV was the source. The alternative is WIV was not the source and there is not a conspiracy of scientists round the world lying and covering it up.

You are literally promoting a conspiracy theory.
 
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1) You have no idea what I have or have not done do not claim that you know things you cannot know about me or my activities.

2) Neither you nor Shi are medically qualified. I am and spend most of my time working in respiratory medicine and infectious disease, I would probably qualify as an expert. The most likely cause for a pneumonia in this instance; miners being exposed to bat guano is a fungal pneumonia. I have seen no reports of positive or negative tests for fungal infections. No virus was ever isolated from the miners so the occurrence or otherwise of an unknown pneumonia is irrelevant to whether Covid-19 resulted from a leak from WIV or a natural cross over event most likely at the Wuhan wet market. The clinical presentation would not fit with Covid-19. The ages (36 - 63) and co-morbidities of the miners would not fit for them to get severe covid-19 requiring hospital admission. All six miners became unwell and three died; this is completely different from Covid-19 when you would expect most to have a mild or asymptomatic illness and perhaps only the oldest to have a significant pneumonia. The x-rays reported do not show appearances typical for covid-19. Why should Shi have tried to conceal a SARS-r CoV outbreak eight years before the pandemic? This would have been great for her, it would have brought lots more funding. The blood results from the three patients tested were negative on serology for both SARS-CoV-1 and SARS-CoV-2. So we can be fairly sure that the unknown pneumonia was not due to SARS or Covid-19. The miners are a red herring.

The problem remains that the more data comes out the more it favours a natural cross over event, and none favours an origin from WIV. All that favours WIV as a source is innuendo and co-incidence. BSL-4 laboratory - irrelevant. Research on mice with humanised lungs is irrelevant as WIV had no access to any virus that could be changed to / evolve into SARS-CoV-2. Shi lying is a circular argument; WIV must be the source otherwise why would Shi lie. Shi lied because WIV was the source. The alternative is WIV was not the source and there is not a conspiracy of scientists round the world lying and covering it up.

You are literally promoting a conspiracy theory.

Exactly. I have no idea why we keep having to discuss this incident when there is no reason to think it means anything at all. AFAICT it's nothing more that one factoid thrown out as part of a Gish Gallop of meaningless details in the absence of actual evidence for a lab leak.
 
Well, looks like the Senate Report o nthe Origins of Covid has been released.

Lurid cover, but some of the contents seem more sober and interesting.

Source
 
Well, looks like the Senate Report o nthe Origins of Covid has been released.

Lurid cover, but some of the contents seem more sober and interesting.

Source

Thanks.

Clearly a lot of work went into this. It is not intended to be a neutral report comparing the likelihood of a natural cross over event versus a laboratory source almost no consideration was given to evidence supporting a natural cause. It was intended to be a hatchet job; they were looking for evidence of guilt. To give them their due the conclusion was

This investigation focused on the question of the origins of the pandemic. It could not determine whether the SARS-CoV-2 virus was a product of nature alone or possible genetic manipulation. The preponderance of information affirms the plausibility of a research-related incident that was likely unintentional resulting from failures of biosafety containment during vaccine-related research. The nature of the identified biosafety vulnerabilities increased the likelihood that such containment failures were not immediately recognized. The possibility of unrecognized biocontainment breaches combined with SARS- CoV-2 clinical characteristics of asymptomatic infection and mild clinical illness in the majority of infections likely confounded early recognition and containment of the initial outbreak. Such initial unrecognized infections could serve as the nidus of the outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan and is a plausible proximate cause of the pandemic.

The strongest term they could use was that a research related incident was 'plausible'.

I think no one has ever said that such an occurrence was not possible, it is plausible, but this is far from saying that it is the most likely explanation. Certainly they found no smoking gun.

Some of their ideas really need a time machine to be convincing. An example is the suggestion that the Chinese were developing a covid vaccine in November 2019 (which they deny), and that the virus could have escaped from the laboratory carrying out animal testing of the vaccine. But this then begs the question about why the Chinese would be developing a vaccine for a virus two months before it was identified.
 
The strongest term they could use was that a research related incident was 'plausible'.


They go further. They say both hypotheses are plausible, but the preponderance of the evidence favors a lab leak:

The information contained in this Source Reference Document reflects 18 months of extensive research and accompanying analyses of these two plausible hypotheses. This document was the product of a multi-disciplinary effort by medical, scientific, legal, political and general policy analysts to catalog open source (unclassified) information relevant to the respective theories. Both hypotheses are plausible. The natural zoonotic spillover hypothesis is weakened by the absence of key epidemiological and genetic data from the Huanan Seafood Market. However, data required to support a natural zoonotic source is dependent on information provided by China, and that is incomplete or contradictory. The preponderance of circumstantial evidence supports an unintentional research-related incident.
 
They go further. They say both hypotheses are plausible, but the preponderance of the evidence favors a lab leak:

Thanks I missed that particular line.

I think that as they say all that favours a labarotory source is circumstantial evidence, there is no actual evidence. Whilst they say lack of some key bits of physical evidence to prove the natural spill over theory weakens it, they do not say the complete lack of actual physical evidence, and lack of key circumstantial evidence weakens the laboratory source theory.

The actual scientific analysis in general seems fair. The interpretation of the scientific evidence is generally fair, I would quibble with some bits. The use of circumstantial evidence is hugely biased as it is all looking in one direction and is far more subjectively interpreted. It also tells no coherent story, they cannot produce a timeline, that cannot agree on a laboratory involved, and they cannot get over the huge barrier that none of the laboratories had access to a virus that was a precursor to SARS-CoV-2.
 

I think that they probably had someone who understood what they were doing write the strictly science parts, it was better than I expected, and the conclusions were not unreasonable, though I would disagree with some. I think this bit was written by someone who knew what they were doing and had enough courage to not let then distort the science. But then there was interpretation, and that drifted from the science, especially when it came to non-evidence based comments like 'a majority of scientists' - which scientists? Does this include geologists and botanists and physicists? Who took the poll?

Then there is all the 'circumstantial evidence' mostly bias racism and innuendo. The time machine bit where the Chinese were developing a vaccine from early November and therefore had presumably identified the pandemic potential back in October or earlier is just science fiction.
(Unless the Chinese actually have an AI that can reliably predict six months into the future in which case I'm going off to learn Chinese.)
 
If this is new,

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/co...ecame-more-likely/53PYG3DHIJB6NA2TMTLA2TW66Y/

If old I have not been following the thread so apologies.

Mostly nonsense. They confuse sampling the bats (anal swabs, blood tests) with bringing back living bats. There is no evidence bats were being collected, the samples they refer to are samples of viruses not bats.

They say there are no bats in Wuhan, nonsense just not the types of bat that carry relevant viruses.
 
Mostly nonsense. They confuse sampling the bats (anal swabs, blood tests) with bringing back living bats. There is no evidence bats were being collected, the samples they refer to are samples of viruses not bats. ....
:rolleyes: That evidence was posted multiple times up thread.

And here I thought you went back and read some of the older posts. Of course I should have known since you brought up an old claim that had been discussed for pages, ignoring all the discussion about what the miners died from.

You ignore everything that doesn't confirm your bias. And you take everything Shi and Daszak say at face value. And don't try a tu quoque because I respond to things that don't support the lab origin hypothesis, I don't simply post with lalalalala I can't hear you claims.

In addition to evidence that was posted that cages for the live bats existed at the WIV there is a video of the live bats at the institute.

https://noqreport.com/2021/06/25/proof-of-bats-at-wuhan-lab/
STORY AT-A-GLANCE
World Health Organization investigators, including Peter Daszak, EcoHealth Alliance president, claimed the suggestion of live bats inside the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China was a conspiracy theory

The dismissal was part of the rationale used to bolster the idea that SARS-CoV-2 is a natural virus that jumped from animals to humans

Australian investigative journalist Sharri Markson revealed proof via video footage taken inside the facility that WIV kept live bats in cages

The live bats at WIV directly contradict statements by Daszak and others, who insisted no bats were housed in the lab

“It is not a conspiracy to state there were live bats at the lab,” Markson says. “It is a fact”

Oh dear, we have to throw that summary out because the website is a known alt-right site. :rolleyes:

The video actually came from DRASTIC.

The Sun (OMG another suspect source :rolleyes: )
The researcher [Daszak] has long attempted to downplay the possibility of a lab leak, and was a key figure in attempting to have it dismissed as a "conspiracy theory"....

However, these comments are directly contradicted in the video by the CAS which was released in May 2017.

Dr Daszak already attempted to backpedal on his comments earlier this month, saying the WHO team - whose probe was branded a whitewash - didn't even ask if they had bats.

"We didn’t ask them if they had bats. I wouldn’t be surprised if, like many other virology labs, they were trying to set up a bat colony," he said.

And there are videos of researchers handling bats in the field without gloves, including receiving an occasional bite.

Scientists at Wuhan lab in COVID probe admitted being bitten by bats: reports
Scientists at the Chinese lab eyed as a possible source of the coronavirus pandemic were previously filmed getting bitten and spattered with blood while handling bats without protection, according to reports.

The state-run TV footage showed researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) disregarding gloves, masks and other PPE while handling bats and collecting feces in the field, Taiwan News first noted.

In one section, virus expert Cui Jie related how a bat’s fangs once went right through his glove, describing it as feeling “like being jabbed with a needle,” the outlet noted.

The video — first broadcast in China on Dec. 29, 2017 — then cut to a person’s limb badly swollen from an apparent bat bite. Scientists also admitted getting spattered with blood during the research, according to the Sun.

The least you could do is have an honest discussion and stop accusing people of promoting CTs.

The problem of the natural spillover hypothesis remains the lack of any source animal. The finding of virus genetic material along with the raccoon dog material is nothing conclusive in the least.

Whereas data released in reports and documents published before the pandemic reveal all sorts of things Shi and Daszak keep denying.
 
Australian investigative journalist Sharri Markson revealed proof via video footage taken inside the facility that WIV kept live bats in cages

From what I remember, the video that showed a bat was from a promotional video for WIV made by a company that had used footage from an Australian lab.

It was also a promotional video for the BSL-4 lab, which, from what I understand, most of the lab leakers no longer see as the source of the outbreak because now they suspect the BSL-3 labs or BSL-2 labs of the WIV or if not that then the CCDC labs.

In any event, none of this brings us closer to a coherent story. All we have is lots of factoids smooshed together to create a scary uncertain picture about how the lab people probably got bitten in the field before taking the bats to the BSL-4 lab where they escaped and went to the BSL-3 labs which had safety problems and may have bitten the Monjiang miners who had a deadly virus that Zheng-li Shi and Peter Daszak were serial passaging after covering up an actual spillover, then gone to the CCDC labs, while the lab people were putting all the (Top Sickret!) viruses on a public database which they took down when the escaped bat started biting all the athletes at the Wuhan Games and when the whole city was locked down (in Top Sikret!), which than ran rife through the population, but left no serological traces which explains why the "right-out-of-the-box" virus suddenly became impossible to cover-up when someone from the lab (presumably) visited the Huanan Seafood Market and it became a superspreader event.

By the way, how is Andrew Huff's book?
 
From what I remember, the video that showed a bat was from a promotional video for WIV made by a company that had used footage from an Australian lab.
If that's what you remember, find the link.

It was also a promotional video for the BSL-4 lab, which, from what I understand, most of the lab leakers no longer see as the source of the outbreak because now they suspect the BSL-3 labs or BSL-2 labs of the WIV or if not that then the CCDC labs.
I don't recall any evidence the cages were for the BSL4 lab. In fact, a lot of the evidence for live bats at the WIV predate the BSL4 lab.

Some of the reporters haven't yet caught on to the fact the leak was not out of the BSL4 lab. It was either out of the BSL2 lab or the CCDC lab closer to the market.

In any event, none of this brings us closer to a coherent story. All we have is lots of factoids smooshed together to create a scary uncertain picture about how the lab people probably got bitten in the field before taking the bats to the BSL-4 lab where they escaped and went to the BSL-3 labs which had safety problems and may have bitten the Monjiang miners who had a deadly virus that Zheng-li Shi and Peter Daszak were serial passaging after covering up an actual spillover, then gone to the CCDC labs, while the lab people were putting all the (Top Sickret!) viruses on a public database which they took down when the escaped bat started biting all the athletes at the Wuhan Games and when the whole city was locked down (in Top Sikret!), which than ran rife through the population, but left no serological traces which explains why the "right-out-of-the-box" virus suddenly became impossible to cover-up when someone from the lab (presumably) visited the Huanan Seafood Market and it became a superspreader event.
Oh there is a coherent story all right, just not the distorted one you have described here.


The UK is blinding itself to the truth about Covid’s originsMatt Ridley, another one of your attack the arguer not the argument sources.
As a US Senate committee’s full, 300-page report on the origin of Covid now makes clear, a whole string of clues points towards a laboratory accident as the probable cause of the pandemic.

For example, there is: evidence of biosafety concerns at the lab in the autumn of 2019; the Chinese authorities’ refusal to share details of early human cases of the disease in November 2019; persistent reports from US intelligence that these early cases include lab workers; the apparent start of vaccine development in China before the outbreak was even declared; and the astonishingly uncooperative attitude of the Chinese authorities to investigating the origin.


And one of the the proverbial holes in the spillover hypothesis
Add to these: the failure to find infected animals in markets or on farms; the revelation that the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) brought about 200 kinds of bat coronavirus to Wuhan; the risky nature of the research they did to combine the genes of new viruses with existing ones and test them on human cells and humanised mice;


Here's the CT: Daszak and Shi et al whose attempt was exposed early on:
Despite the best efforts of a small group of Western virologists who collaborated with the WIV to shut down the debate in the West and label a lab leak a conspiracy theory, the matter will not go away.


About that early vaccine research in China and more of the evidence fitting into place:
New Senate Report Finds Covid Likely Originated from Two Chinese Lab Leaks
The report speculates that two lab leaks occurred within weeks of one another in the fall of 2019 in Wuhan, China, home to a virology research institute. In the months following the initial leaks, Covid-19 cases in the surrounding region spiked.

The theory is largely based on the development timeline of China’s Covid vaccine: Dr. Zhou Yusen, a Chinese military scientist who later died under mysterious circumstances, filed a Covid-vaccine patent on February 24 2020, which suggests that work on the vaccine must have begun at least as early as November, 2019,
Oh but once again we have to ignore this report because the GOP and Trump's fingerprints are on the dust cover.

“China has had every chance to disprove all reports surrounding the origins of COVID-19, but they have not & will not. I’m proud to release The Origins of COVID-19 Report, a crucial development in getting to the bottom of COVID-19’s origins,” Senator Marshall tweeted on Monday night.



By the way, how is Andrew Huff's book?
It's still on hold at the library. I'm number 5 in line for 8 copies so I'll get it soon.
 
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A single video posted by an anonymous person with no source to support that the bats filmed were at WIV. This is the only 'evidence' for bats at WIV.

There is also a conflation of keeping bats for research and collecting them in the wild. Many laboratories do research on mice and rats but they do not go out and catch thenm in the wild.

If WIV were doing research on bats then one would have expected them to have published the research, there would have been no reason not to prior to 2020. Yet there is no such research. Their described research involves catching bats at their roosts, sampling them and letting them go free.

People who worked at WIV have denied that bats were kept there.

It is worth remembering that the ancestor of SARS has not yet been identified in the wild. Closely related viruses have been but not the actual source of SARS. Not surprising considering how widespread bats are and how little sampling has been done.

The research done was not gain of function research nor was it dangerous. The spike protein from identified SARS like viruses was put on to a mouse SARS virus (ie one that was no pathogenic in humans) to see if it would bind to human ACE2. In any event this is irrelevant since it could not have resulted in SARS-CoV-2 because they did not have access to a similar virus until the pandemic had already occurred.

The Senate report is nonsense. The argument that China had started on a SARS vaccine no later than the beginning of November 2019 and that the virus escaped when the vaccine was being tested on animals is ridiculous. There is no evidence for such research being done in 2019. There would be no reason to develop (and no way to do so) a vaccine against a virus that wasn't known at the time, and hadn't caused any disease.

Dismissing all the scientists with actual expertise as being part of a conspiracy to cover up the 'true' cause, so that ill informed opinions of non-experts are the only evidence is literally arguing for a conspiracy theory.
 
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A single video posted by an anonymous person with no source to support that the bats filmed were at WIV. This is the only 'evidence' for bats at WIV. [snipped the rest]
No point going past this dishonest attempt at a discussion.

The video was not the only evidence of live bats at the WIV. If you want a discussion go back to the earlier pages in the thread and read up on what was posted.

There was a patent (or 2?) for the cages, someone got bit by a bat being held in the cages, there was a memo (or email) of someone with instructions to another what to do about feeding the bats while the person doing it at the time went on vacation and that's just off the top of my head.

What did you do, go to sleep and come back hoping we'd all forget?
 
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No point going past this dishonest attempt at a discussion.

The video was not the only evidence of live bats at the WIV. If you want a discussion go back to the earlier pages in the thread and read up on what was posted.

There was a patent (or 2?) for the cages, someone got bit by a bat being held in the cages, there was a memo (or email) of someone with instructions to another what to do about feeding the bats while the person doing it at the time went on vacation and that's just off the top of my head.

What did you do, go to sleep and come back hoping we'd all forget?
No, I was working all hours trying to keep people alive.
 
Since folks don't want to review the evidence posted early on in the thread, the WA Examiner has a summary of the evidence of live bats at the WIV. My memory was correct.

Evidence mounts Wuhan lab studied live bats despite denials
Re the video of the live bats: yes it was a video promoting the BSL4 lab, but it was made in 2017 and was hardly questionable evidence.
Evidence that includes newly unearthed Chinese government video continues to mount indicating the Wuhan Institute of Virology studied live bats in its lab, despite longtime lab collaborator Peter Daszak calling this a “conspiracy theory."

Footage obtained and released by the Australian and Sky News was purportedly shot from inside the Wuhan lab and shows live bats kept in cages. The video was reportedly produced and released by the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2017 to tout the opening and launch of the Wuhan lab’s then-new biosafety level four laboratory. The apparently Chinese state-produced video shows multiple bats in a cage, a researcher wearing a mask and gloves holding a bat and feeding it a worm, video of researchers in personal protective equipment out searching for and collecting bats, and a bat hanging off of a researcher’s hat as the person wears glasses and a surgical face mask.


The volume of coronavirus specimens collected from Yunnan was huge:
In the video, ... A voiceover states: “Over more than a decade, Shi Zhengli’s research team has collected more than 15,000 bat samples in China and many countries of Africa, searching for the origins of SARS, as well as isolating and characterizing many new viruses.” ...


After multiple denials, claiming again and again the lab leak was a CT, Daszak admitted the WHO inspectors didn't ask about live bats:
Daszak seemed to concede months later that the Wuhan lab may have had live bats after all, admitting he hadn’t asked about it when the WHO-China team visited the laboratory. ...

Daszak replied: “You're right, but also we didn't ask them if they had bats. I wouldn't be surprised if, like many other virology labs, they were trying to set up a bat colony.” ...

Shi also claimed in the annex that “all fieldwork is done with full PPE.” But Shi previously admitted her team did not always use full protective gear.


Live bats and those humanized mice Shi got from Baric:
Further evidence that the Wuhan lab was studying live bats was laid out by Taiwan News in February.

An archived website from the Chinese Academy of Sciences Laboratory Animal Resources stated: “The Wuhan Institute of Virology … has 126 cages for Japanese white rabbits, 340 cages for SD and Wistar rats, inbred strains, closed groups, mutant strains, and genetically engineered mice. There are 3268 cages, 12 ferrets, 12 bats, and 2 species of cotton bollworm and beet armyworm, totaling 52 strains.”

An article in Sixth Tone from May 2018 on China's bat caves included a passage about Wuhan lab researcher Luo Dongsheng, saying: “Their one-day expedition to Taiyi Cave — a cavern 2,200 meters deep, located 100 kilometers south of Hubei’s provincial capital, Wuhan — is less about the bats themselves than the viruses they carry … By 8:30 p.m., Luo’s team has collected a full rack of swabs and bagged a dozen live bats for further testing back at the lab.


And like I said there was an article noting the bats needed feeding when the caregivers went on vacation.
An article in China’s Science Times quoted Wuhan lab researcher Zhang Huajun as saying, “The research team captured a few bats from the wild to be used as experimental animals. They need to be fed every day. This Spring Festival, the students went home for a holiday, and Teacher Shi silently undertook the task of raising bats.”


And there was that patent for bat cages evidence:
And a patent apparently filed by the Wuhan lab in 2018 and granted in 2019 was for “a kind of carnivorism bat rearging [sic] cage” with an abstract describing it, “The utility model discloses a kind of carnivorism bat rearging [sic] cages … The utility model makes bat being capable of healthy growth and breeding under artificial condition.


Why is the fact there were live bats at the WIV denied? The conclusion is obvious.
 
Things are a bit less pressurised at the moment.
So you should have time to read the summary of evidence of live mice at the WIV in my above post. Good.

Keep in mind it is a summary and there is additional corroborative evidence of those mice being there. Also note the evidence predates the pandemic, a time when Shi and Daszak weren't hiding any evidence of a lab leak.
 
So you should have time to read the summary of evidence of live mice at the WIV in my above post. Good.

Keep in mind it is a summary and there is additional corroborative evidence of those mice being there. Also note the evidence predates the pandemic, a time when Shi and Daszak weren't hiding any evidence of a lab leak.

Ooh Mice! But not as scary as flying mice.

The mice are just a 'look squirrel'. They are a red herring. They are irrelevant. Mice cannot make SARS-CoV-2.

I don't doubt mice were there. There are published papers on research using mice. But the research could not lead to a pandemic.
 
Ooh Mice! But not as scary as flying mice.

The mice are just a 'look squirrel'. They are a red herring. They are irrelevant. Mice cannot make SARS-CoV-2.
Hard to type the words you were wrong, there is convincing evidence there were live mice kept at the WIV.

No the mice are not a red herring. They are part of a slew of evidentiary elements that add up to proof the researchers at the WIV were doing dangerous GoF (gain of function) research on dangerous PPPs (potentially pandemic pathogens).

I don't doubt mice were there.
Hmmm, you seem to have doubted it above. But never mind, I see you have come around on this one.

There are published papers on research using mice. But the research could not lead to a pandemic.
Could not??? Not 'did not' in this case or some other unsupported assertion? Perhaps I'm not reading that correctly.

However, actually yes, their research could have led to the pandemic in the lab leak hypothesis. Daszak spelled it out in an interview at the Nipah Virus conference just before the outbreak of COVID-19. He said they were working on pathogenic coronaviruses which were easily manipulated in the lab with the goal of developing a broad spectrum vaccine before a natural spillover of another pathogen like SARS occurred. The location of risk was not in Wuhan but closer to the bat reservoirs they were taking samples from.

Nice idea until whoops, guess they created that SARS-like pathogenic coronavirus they were trying to develop a vaccine against.
 
Hard to type the words you were wrong, there is convincing evidence there were live mice kept at the WIV.

No the mice are not a red herring. They are part of a slew of evidentiary elements that add up to proof the researchers at the WIV were doing dangerous GoF (gain of function) research on dangerous PPPs (potentially pandemic pathogens).

Hmmm, you seem to have doubted it above. But never mind, I see you have come around on this one.

Could not??? Not 'did not' in this case or some other unsupported assertion? Perhaps I'm not reading that correctly.

However, actually yes, their research could have led to the pandemic in the lab leak hypothesis. Daszak spelled it out in an interview at the Nipah Virus conference just before the outbreak of COVID-19. He said they were working on pathogenic coronaviruses which were easily manipulated in the lab with the goal of developing a broad spectrum vaccine before a natural spillover of another pathogen like SARS occurred. The location of risk was not in Wuhan but closer to the bat reservoirs they were taking samples from.

Nice idea until whoops, guess they created that SARS-like pathogenic coronavirus they were trying to develop a vaccine against.

There is no way that research on mice could lead to SARS-CoV-2. In theory a potentially pathogenic virus could be created, but we do not currently have the knowledge or technology to create SARS-CoV-2, the question is not could a pandemic have been caused in theory by laboratory research and a laboratory leak; yes it could. The fact is SARS-CoV-2 could not have been the product of laboratory research at WIV, WIV could not have created SARS-CoV-2.

The question is not whether Skeptic Ginger could have murdered someone. I am sure that potentially SG could have murdered someone. The question is was a specific murder committed by SG. Whether there might have been a laboratory leak, whether research might have created a pandemic virus (and I believe there is no way the research published could have done so), is irrelevant because the actual pandemic virus could not have come from research or a laboratory leak at WIV.
 
There is no way that research on mice could lead to SARS-CoV-2. In theory a potentially pathogenic virus could be created, but we do not currently have the knowledge or technology to create SARS-CoV-2, the question is not could a pandemic have been caused in theory by laboratory research and a laboratory leak; yes it could. The fact is SARS-CoV-2 could not have been the product of laboratory research at WIV, WIV could not have created SARS-CoV-2.

The question is not whether Skeptic Ginger could have murdered someone. I am sure that potentially SG could have murdered someone. The question is was a specific murder committed by SG. Whether there might have been a laboratory leak, whether research might have created a pandemic virus (and I believe there is no way the research published could have done so), is irrelevant because the actual pandemic virus could not have come from research or a laboratory leak at WIV.
No one is saying this but you. Do you have any links? Here you are again asserting old arguments that have been addressed in the thread. When I refute this falsehood are you going to recycle another one?

What has been said is RaTG13 was too far genetically removed to be the direct antecedent. But that's not what is hypothesized to have happened.

First, we don't know what the closest ancestor to COVID was that the lab was working with because China won't release the full genome database of all the coronaviruses the WIV was working with.

This is all in the thread, the GoF research being done at the WIV, how serial passages in vitro with live cultures resulted in an enhanced spike protein gene in the coronavirus and more importantly how the furin cleavage gene was likely inserted.

But let's just look at how it could have happened refuting your claim it wasn't possible.

Might SARS‐CoV‐2 Have Arisen via Serial Passage through an Animal Host or Cell Culture? — A potential explanation for much of the novel coronavirus’ distinctive

Abstract - ...Unless the intermediate host necessary for completing a natural zoonotic jump is identified, the dual‐use gain‐of‐function research practice of viral serial passage should be considered a viable route by which the novel coronavirus arose. The practice of serial passage mimics a natural zoonotic jump, and offers explanations for SARS‐CoV‐2's distinctive spike‐protein region and its unexpectedly high affinity for angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE2), as well as the notable polybasic furin cleavage site within it. Additional molecular clues raise further questions, all of which warrant full investigation into the novel coronavirus's origins and a re‐examination of the risks and rewards of dual‐use gain‐of‐function research.
 
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Since folks don't want to review the evidence posted early on in the thread, the WA Examiner has a summary of the evidence of live bats at the WIV. My memory was correct.

Evidence mounts Wuhan lab studied live bats despite denials
Re the video of the live bats: yes it was a video promoting the BSL4 lab, but it was made in 2017 and was hardly questionable evidence.



The volume of coronavirus specimens collected from Yunnan was huge:



After multiple denials, claiming again and again the lab leak was a CT, Daszak admitted the WHO inspectors didn't ask about live bats:



Live bats and those humanized mice Shi got from Baric:



And like I said there was an article noting the bats needed feeding when the caregivers went on vacation.



And there was that patent for bat cages evidence:



Why is the fact there were live bats at the WIV denied? The conclusion is obvious.

You're offering up the Wahington Examiner and you want us to take you seriously? Get back to us when you have something other than conspiracy theory nonsense.
 
No one is saying this but you. Do you have any links? Here you are again asserting old arguments that have been addressed in the thread. When I refute this falsehood are you going to recycle another one?

What has been said is RaTG13 was too far genetically removed to be the direct antecedent. But that's not what is hypothesized to have happened.

First, we don't know what the closest ancestor to COVID was that the lab was working with because China won't release the full genome database of all the coronaviruses the WIV was working with.

This is all in the thread, the GoF research being done at the WIV, how serial passages in vitro with live cultures resulted in an enhanced spike protein gene in the coronavirus and more importantly how the furin cleavage gene was likely inserted.

But let's just look at how it could have happened refuting your claim it wasn't possible.

Might SARS‐CoV‐2 Have Arisen via Serial Passage through an Animal Host or Cell Culture? — A potential explanation for much of the novel coronavirus’ distinctive

We know the sequences of all three live viruses they had isolated. None of which were close to SARS-CoV-2. RaTG13 was never isolated as a live virus it is a reconstructed sequence, so only exists in a database. We know the closest indentified (by WGS not culture) viruses in the wild were from Laos, not anywhere that WIV had looked for bat viruses. No viruses simialr to SARS-CoV-2 were identified in the sequences from the areas where WIV were looking for viruses.

The research done at WIV was not gain of function research. They used a known SARS like mouse virus ie nothing like SARS-CoV-2, they then inserted the Spike protein sequence from isolates to see if these spike proteins would bind to the ACE2 receptor on mice expressing human ACE2 receptor. They used a non-pathogenic (in humans virus). This could not have produced SARS-CoV-2. They also used pseudotyped viruses that are replication deficient.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7127415/

There is no evidence that WIV did any serial passage, nor is there any reason for them to have done so. Serial passgae is a classical way of attenuating a virus not making it more virulent. Serial passage in mice would make it more specific for mice not humans. That they could have done serial passage is not evidence that they did so. Skeptic Ginger could have pushed a little old lady under a bus, that in theory SG could be a murderer is not evidence that SG is a murderer.

The furin cleavage site is another red herring. There is no evidence that WIV inserted a Furin cleavage site. The Furin cleavafge site is inserted out of frame which would not be the case if it was intelligently designed. It is not a particularly good Furin cleavage site if designing one a much better site could have been inserted.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.2211107119

One of the early mutations was necessary because the location of the Furin cleavage site splitting the spike protein made SARs-CoV-2 relatively poorly adapted to humans.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7127415/

The paper you quote seems to be from people in Florida with no back ground in virology. They just speculate, they provide no evidence of anything.
 
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