Origins of Covid

[Belz...]

Originally Posted by lomiller

5-10 generations of hosts plus many many generations of the virus itself inside of each host.

Oh, my! I only suggested this but now you've put a specific number on it! Yuppy will be all over you!!

[lomiller]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

Why do you need an interpretation of how Daszak was misunderstood when you can watch him for yourself?

It's not "interpretation". He was interviewing Daszak in the video you are telling people to watch. In the video angrysoba linked he explains exactly what he and Daszak were discussing and how that discussion is being misinterpreted by people like you.

[lomiller]

Originally Posted by RecoveringYuppy

Simple question: Should we be investigating the WIV or not?

We did and found nothing. I have no particular objection to further investigation but unless there is some dramatic new information we have our answer.

[lomiller]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

And perhaps you missed the answer because it was within a muddle of answers:

There is no "single" piece. It is an assessment of many many pieces.

Then list multiple pieces of evidence supporting the lab leak hypothesis.

Again though, "it's possible" isn't evidence for a hypothesis, it's just a restatement of the hypothesis. Give us evidence that it did happen, not just another batch of hand-waving on how "it could have happened".

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by lomiller

It's not "interpretation". He was interviewing Daszak in the video you are telling people to watch. In the video angrysoba linked he explains exactly what he and Daszak were discussing and how that discussion is being misinterpreted by people like you.

It's not hard to understand the interview. The interview sounds great, all the things EcoHealth has done and is doing and the reason behind whatever. So the fact the podcast group exonerates the Daszak interview makes sense when you take the interview as a whole.

It's only the key part, from minute 27.5 to ~31 where anything of significance to this thread is mentioned. That's where Daszak gets to the wildlife market risks. He notes SARS came from bats and they found over 100 new SARS-related coronaviruses in bats in Yunnan.

"Some of them get into human cells in the lab" Daszak's own words. "Some of them can cause SARS disease in humanized mouse models."

From there Daszak explains what they are trying to do with this research and there is nothing about what he says that sounds reckless. It makes sense they are trying to reduce the number of spillover events.

It's no wonder the podcast group thinks that's all peachy keen and lay people just don't get it.

This week in virology

The point about the interview are just those key comments, they are experimenting with cultures in the lab, ie live virus, and they are infecting humanized mice meaning mice with human cells.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by lomiller

We did and found nothing. I have no particular objection to further investigation but unless there is some dramatic new information we have our answer.

"We?"

You mean the WHO investigation which currently more than a few experts in the field do not believe was adequate?

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by lomiller

Then list multiple pieces of evidence supporting the lab leak hypothesis.

Again though, "it's possible" isn't evidence for a hypothesis, it's just a restatement of the hypothesis. Give us evidence that it did happen, not just another batch of hand-waving on how "it could have happened".

I'm not going to review the thread for you.

[lomiller]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

It's not hard to understand the interview.

And yet according to the person who conducted the interview you are grossly misconstruing the discussion.

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

"We?"

You mean the WHO investigation which currently more than a few experts in the field do not believe was adequate?

If the WHO doesn't qualify as "we" who would? (no pun intended)

Are you expecting to be granted personal access to conduct your own investigation? Are you demanding an investigation be conducted by people who already agree with your conclusion? Are you saying you'll only accept an investigation that gives you the result you want?

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

I'm not going to review the thread for you.

Evasion noted

[RecoveringYuppy]

Originally Posted by lomiller

We did and found nothing. I have no particular objection to further investigation but unless there is some dramatic new information we have our answer.

Who is "we"? The WHO? Tedros himself says the team that investigated WIV (and elsewhere) didn't get access to the right data and didn't include the proper specialists. And for crying out loud we do not have our answer.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by lomiller

And yet according to the person who conducted the interview you are grossly misconstruing the discussion. ...

See, right here you completely ignored my post and continued commenting as if I hadn't said anything.

To review, this is the only relevant part of the Daszak interview:

"Some of them get into human cells in the lab" Daszak's own words. "Some of them can cause SARS disease in humanized mouse models."

That was the only thing in that interview it was cited for.

Did your podcast group address the fact Daszak admitted they were working with live coronavirus adapted to human cells at the WIV?

Have we seen these strains of coronavirus the lab claims bore no resemblance to COVID 19 yet could infect human cells? I'm guessing no we have not.


21 pages full of material and you clam, "Evasion noted". Right.

[Capsid]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

What the telegraph article states is not that the 2008 research was with a precursor to COVID 19, it states:And no, I had not looked at the 2008 study though your link is very interesting. I did read a reference to the 2010 paper but I don't believe I linked to it here.



More recently was the US withdrawing financial support for the GoF research at the WIV after determining the research was too dangerous.

I posted this upthread and I am aware of the editor's note they added contemporarily: Nature 2015: Engineered bat virus stirs debate over risky research There's a lot more in the thread about the potential for the coronavirus in bats to jump directly to humans including the case of the 6 miners in Yunnan who were infected after working around bats in the caves there. 3 died.

And it is still high on the differential that students and/or researchers brought one of these coronaviruses back after a field trip to those caves. The pictures of them collecting specimens from the bats is appalling from an infection preventionist (infection control) POV. There's a link here somewhere to those images. What that suggested to me and what I believe is probably occurring in the WIV but also elsewhere in other labs is a sense the danger is disregarded to a large extent.

There is also a link to the kind of live cultures they were using in their experiments with the coronaviruses they collected from the horseshoe bats in Yunnan.

Quoted in post # 229

2017: Discovery of a rich gene pool of bat SARS-related coronaviruses provides new insights into the origin of SARS coronavirus

I don't know the kind of lab you work in but if it is like what I see in my healthcare field, people are not meticulous around dangerous pathogens when they should be. The link a couple pages back (a very long post) to all the previous lab accidents and near misses is an example of what I am talking about.

I listened to less than a minute of the podcast recently posted but from what I saw they had the same attitude. A cavalier attitude about dangerous work is not confined to handling dangerous pathogens.

i work in high containment labs. Definitely not cavalier. We are regularly inspected by the Health and Safety Executive .


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by Capsid

i work in high containment labs. Definitely not cavalier. We are regularly inspected by the Health and Safety Executive .

Good to know. I have lots of horror stories where that wasn't the case.

When we had the anthrax scare a decade or so ago, I was called to help a number of clients with related issues. One was to a security company the local mall used that had found some white powder in an envelope on a bench in the mall. Instead of calling in the hazmat team like they should have, it ended up in the trash compactor and a number of employees had handled it. Fortunately it wasn't anthrax.

The mistakes that happened with SARS were mind boggling. Most of those I read about in the Promed news feed. For example India would claim temperature monitoring was going on at all the international airports and someone who actually went through one of these airports said there was no monitoring at all, no one even asked them any questions about symptoms.

One of the physicians at a hospital in HongKong took care of SARS patients, developed a fever and still went on vacation to Tokyo Disneyland.

And last year when the pandemic started the first patient came here from Wuhan, China and developed symptoms. He ended up in a hospital a little north of here. Things were handled properly to a point. But the public health failed to do any contact tracing of patients on the plane or in the airport. They only looked at his close contacts just before he was hospitalized.

Granted we didn't have a lot of information then about the incubation period and contagiousness prior to symptoms. But no one knew that wasn't an issue either. By the time anyone realized it, the virus was spreading all over the county. It was too widespread to do any contact tracing.


30+ years and many examples like those it should be clear why that article on past level 4 pathogens lab mishaps was no surprise to me.

Some of these kinds of errors at the WIV have been cited in this thread. Some occurred when the WIV only had a level 2 biosafety lab. And when they did open the level 4 lab there's a link here to a complaint not enough staff were trained to work there.

Of course the Chinese government response was/is to say they have a perfect lab and perfect procedures and could have done no wrong. I am not reassured by that.

[lomiller]

Originally Posted by RecoveringYuppy

Who is "we"? The WHO? Tedros himself says the team that investigated WIV (and elsewhere) didn't get access to the right data and didn't include the proper specialists. And for crying out loud we do not have our answer.

The people who performed the investigation seem to be satisfied with the access and data.

[lomiller]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

See, right here you completely ignored my post and continued commenting as if I hadn't said anything.

To review, this is the only relevant part of the Daszak interview:

Again, the people directly involved in the conversation have said that your interpretation is out of context and flat out wrong.

[RecoveringYuppy]

Originally Posted by lomiller

The people who performed the investigation seem to be satisfied with the access and data.

No they ******* aren't. What the hell is the matter with you? They said they didn't have the access they needed or the right skill set.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by lomiller

Again, the people directly involved in the conversation have said that your interpretation is out of context and flat out wrong.

So you don't understand the significance then. Got it.

[Belz...]

Originally Posted by RecoveringYuppy

What the hell is the matter with you?

Starting to see a pattern here. You seem to have an issue with people not being entirely aligned with you, even those who actually agree with you.

[RecoveringYuppy]

Originally Posted by Belz...

Starting to see a pattern here. You seem to have an issue with people not being entirely aligned with you, even those who actually agree with you.

He doesn't agree with me and he is lying big time. We absolutely do not have an answer in any sense at all and the investigators themselves said they are "not satisfied" in multiple ways with their report. It is simply a huge lie to say we have an answer on this subject or that the investigators themselves are satisfied. It's a filthy lie.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by Belz...

Starting to see a pattern here. You seem to have an issue with people not being entirely aligned with you, even those who actually agree with you.

Projection:

Quote:

Psychology.
the tendency to ascribe to another person feelings, thoughts, or attitudes present in oneself, or to regard external reality as embodying such feelings, thoughts, etc., in some way.

[lomiller]

Originally Posted by RecoveringYuppy

He doesn't agree with me and he is lying big time. We absolutely do not have an answer in any sense at all and the investigators themselves said they are "not satisfied" in multiple ways with their report. It is simply a huge lie to say we have an answer on this subject or that the investigators themselves are satisfied. It's a filthy lie.

3 members of the team that produced the WHO report are interviewed here. They say it's not perfect or done the way they would do it personally but overall seem satisfied with the information and access they were provided

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7kRxmEgzbQ&t=840s

[Belz...]

Originally Posted by RecoveringYuppy

He doesn't agree with me and he is lying big time.

I meant me.

But your constant "WTF is wrong with you?" doesn't give confidence that you're being very objective and level-headed dhere.

[Belz...]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

Projection:

That's very nice. Now demonstrate it.

[RecoveringYuppy]

Originally Posted by lomiller

3 members of the team that produced the WHO report are interviewed here. They say it's not perfect or done the way they would do it personally but overall seem satisfied with the information and access they were provided

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7kRxmEgzbQ&t=840s

Here's what Tedros has to say:

https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/03/1088702

You said that we have an answer. Please indicate the timestamp in your video where they tell us what that answer is.

ETA: The discussion of the lab investigation seems to be at the 50 minute mark in your video. It describes an interview not a full investigation. In any event, see my link for Tedros' opinion.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Here you go, an article to be published in a couple of days has been previewed by the Daily Mail. You can get a head start dismissing their thesis. That it's in the Daily Mail with all the accompanying sensational language and that the thesis was rejected last year should give you all some ammo.

I was going to wait until the paper was published but the Daily Mail has quite a bit of it excerpted already. Scroll down to the actual paper excerpts. They are copy protected so I can't quote from the paper.

EXCLUSIVE: COVID-19 'has NO credible natural ancestor' and WAS created by Chinese scientists who then tried to cover their tracks with 'retro-engineering' to make it seem like it naturally arose from bats, explosive new study claims

Quote:

The paper's authors, British Professor Angus Dalgleish and Norwegian scientist Dr. Birger Sørensen, wrote that they have had 'prima facie evidence of retro-engineering in China' for a year - but were ignored by academics and major journals.

Dalgleish is a professor of oncology at St George's University, London, and is best known for his breakthrough creating the first working 'HIV vaccine', to treat diagnosed patients and allow them to go off medication for months.

Sørensen, a virologist, is chair of pharmaceutical company, Immunor, which developed a coronavirus vaccine candidate called Biovacc-19. Dalgleish also has share options in the firm.

I'm sure a number of people in this thread will see the bit about the claims being rejected earlier and dismiss the paper.

The 2 scientists have serious credentials and have authored or co-authored hundreds of papers published in scientific and medical journals.

PubMed: Dalgelish

Who are Angus Dalgleish and Birger Sørensen?

Quote:

In the 22-page paper which has been submitted for publication in the scientific journal Quarterly Review of Biophysics Discovery, the scientists describe their months-long 'forensic analysis', looking back at experiments done at the Wuhan lab between 2002 and 2019.

Digging through archives of journals and databases, Dalgleish and Sørensen pieced together how Chinese scientists, some working in concert with American universities, allegedly built the tools to create the coronavirus.

Much of the work was centered around controversial 'Gain of Function' research – temporarily outlawed in the US under the Obama administration. ...

Dalgleish and Sørensen claim that scientists working on Gain of Function projects took a natural coronavirus 'backbone' found in Chinese cave bats and spliced onto it a new 'spike', turning it into the deadly and highly transmissible SARS-Cov-2. ...

But Sørensen said that he believes the virus escaped from lower security areas of the institute, where he believes Gain of Function research was performed.

'We have seen lab leaks and we know it's happening. We also know from the reports we've seen, that coronavirus is worked on in Biosafety Level 2 or 3 labs. If they do Gain of Function in such labs, what do you expect?' he said. ...

The lower level biosafety labs have been noted in citations in this thread.


I don't have any background in the paper's claim:

Quote:

One tell-tale sign of alleged manipulation the two men highlighted was a row of four amino acids they found on the SARS-Cov-2 spike.

... Sørensen said the amino acids all have a positive charge, which cause the virus to tightly cling to the negatively charged parts of human cells like a magnet, and so become more infectious.

But because, like magnets, the positively charged amino acids repel each other, it is rare to find even three in a row in naturally occurring organisms, while four in a row is 'extremely unlikely,' the scientist said.

'The laws of physics mean that you cannot have four positively charged amino acids in a row. The only way you can get this is if you artificially manufacture it,' ...

I understand the positive and negative charges, just not that amino acids have these charges. I'll look for more relevant information on that and await critique by contributors to the thread.


QRB Discovery to save people time looking for the paper when it's published.

[angrysoba]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

Here you go, an article to be published in a couple of days has been previewed by the Daily Mail. You can get a head start dismissing their thesis. That it's in the Daily Mail with all the accompanying sensational language and that the thesis was rejected last year should give you all some ammo.

I was going to wait until the paper was published but the Daily Mail has quite a bit of it excerpted already. Scroll down to the actual paper excerpts. They are copy protected so I can't quote from the paper.

EXCLUSIVE: COVID-19 'has NO credible natural ancestor' and WAS created by Chinese scientists who then tried to cover their tracks with 'retro-engineering' to make it seem like it naturally arose from bats, explosive new study claims

I'm sure a number of people in this thread will see the bit about the claims being rejected earlier and dismiss the paper.

The 2 scientists have serious credentials and have authored or co-authored hundreds of papers published in scientific and medical journals.

PubMed: Dalgelish

Who are Angus Dalgleish and Birger Sørensen?


The lower level biosafety labs have been noted in citations in this thread.


I don't have any background in the paper's claim:
I understand the positive and negative charges, just not that amino acids have these charges. I'll look for more relevant information on that and await critique by contributors to the thread.


QRB Discovery to save people time looking for the paper when it's published.

We went over this one way back.

Remember that YOU also reject the idea it was a bio weapon which is claimed by them.

They said at the time that any attempts to make a vaccine will fail because of the nature of the virus.

Then, guess what? They said they had made their own vaccine (hmmmm, sounds a bit Andrew Wakefield-esque to me).

Maybe if you search the thread for the names or their attempt at a vaccine you might find the discussion.

[RecoveringYuppy]

duplicate

[RecoveringYuppy]

The search terms below don't return any results:
Angus Dalgleish Birger Sørensen +site:internationalskeptics.com
And I can't find them connected to bioweapon claims anywhere.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by angrysoba

We went over this one way back.

Remember that YOU also reject the idea it was a bio weapon which is claimed by them.

How did we go over it when it hasn't been published yet?

I was not convinced the military was involved when more than a few scientists said the virus had no obviously inserted segments that demonstrated it was straight-on manufactured. The debate on that matter was that the virus was not built as a bioweapon. And it was pointed out how stupid it would be for the Chinese to have released this on their own population.

This is not that argument.

Originally Posted by angrysoba

They said at the time that any attempts to make a vaccine will fail because of the nature of the virus.

I vaguely remember something like that but you are mistaken it was about this research.

A search for Dalgleish in this thread turns up nothing. I see from a broader search Dalgleish was mentioned in the CT thread so clearly I had not discussed his work.

And reviewing that thread I see Bubba posted a reference to a Newsmax article on Dalgleish that was only published on May 29th so you must be thinking of something else. Bubba's link is to the same DailyMail story repackaged for Newsmax.

Originally Posted by angrysoba

Then, guess what? They said they had made their own vaccine (hmmmm, sounds a bit Andrew Wakefield-esque to me).

Maybe if you search the thread for the names or their attempt at a vaccine you might find the discussion.

I did, see above.

No, these guys are not like Wakefield but that is the kind of mindless critique I expect to see in reply to this paper.

[Myriad]

This part seems like a strange claim:

Quote:

But because, like magnets, the positively charged amino acids repel each other, it is rare to find even three in a row in naturally occurring organisms, while four in a row is 'extremely unlikely,' the scientist said.

'The laws of physics mean that you cannot have four positively charged amino acids in a row. The only way you can get this is if you artificially manufacture it,' ...

If the laws of physics prevented that sequence of amino acids from replicating in cells (as opposed to some implied "artificial manufacturing" process) then the virus would be non-viable in that form. If it can replicate in cells, it can evolve into that sequence.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by Myriad

This part seems like a strange claim:

If the laws of physics prevented that sequence of amino acids from replicating in cells (as opposed to some implied "artificial manufacturing" process) then the virus would be non-viable in that form. If it can replicate in cells, it can evolve into that sequence.

Meh. Hard to tell if those are Dalgleish's words or the reporter's or Dalgleish's dumbing the explanation down for the reporter or only meant naturally occurring.

[RecoveringYuppy]

Originally Posted by Myriad

This part seems like a strange claim:

If the laws of physics prevented that sequence of amino acids from replicating in cells (as opposed to some implied "artificial manufacturing" process) then the virus would be non-viable in that form. If it can replicate in cells, it can evolve into that sequence.

Since the sentence immediately prior to that says it more accurately but less understandably I thought he was probably just trying to dumb it down for his audience.

[angrysoba]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

How did we go over it when it hasn't been published yet?

I was not convinced the military was involved when more than a few scientists said the virus had no obviously inserted segments that demonstrated it was straight-on manufactured. The debate on that matter was that the virus was not built as a bioweapon. And it was pointed out how stupid it would be for the Chinese to have released this on their own population.

This is not that argument.

I vaguely remember something like that but you are mistaken it was about this research.

A search for Dalgleish in this thread turns up nothing. I see from a broader search Dalgleish was mentioned in the CT thread so clearly I had not discussed his work.

And reviewing that thread I see Bubba posted a reference to a Newsmax article on Dalgleish that was only published on May 29th so you must be thinking of something else. Bubba's link is to the same DailyMail story repackaged for Newsmax.

I did, see above.

No, these guys are not like Wakefield but that is the kind of mindless critique I expect to see in reply to this paper.

The claims they made were posted in this thread a while back. The paper might be new but their claims are not. They may have repackaged them just like the “sick scientists” has been reheated.

And you are not acknowledging their conflict of interest!

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by angrysoba

The claims they made were posted in this thread a while back. The paper might be new but their claims are not. They may have repackaged them just like the “sick scientists” has been reheated.

And you are not acknowledging their conflict of interest!

You're welcome to look for it. I couldn't find it and neither could RY.

And how can I know if there is a conflict of interest without seeing the paper?

And the ill scientists is not analogous to this. Honestly your analogy meter is busted or something.

[RecoveringYuppy]

I searched this thread for "Angus", "Dalg", "Birger", and "rensen". First appearance is today.

[Skeptic Ginger]

OK here it is on page 4 and there's nothing new there, neither is there some post with me siding against Dalgleish. I don't see I even replied to that particular post but I didn't look past page 5.

Here's the quote from your citation:

Quote:

The British/Norwegian team -- also working on a vaccine -- argued that their vaccine approach was likely to work where other existing efforts would fail. They claim the virus' RNA sequence has elements that appear man-made, or artificially inserted, and that their vaccine, Biovacc-19, will take these purported elements into account.

From your link, so claims Mr Racaniello:

Quote:

"It is absolutely 100% impossible that SARS-CoV-2 was made in a laboratory. The elements in the virus, SARS-CoV-2, all came from bat SARS-like CoVs that circulate in nature," Racaniello told ABC News.

We know that is bull ****. It's not impossible and that particular attitude is what Dalgleish alluded to when he said no one wanted to look at the lab accident hypothesis a year ago and they dismissed the paper out of hand.

This is how that is described in the Daily Mail:

Quote:

They said they tried to publish their findings but were rejected by major scientific journals which were at the time resolute that the virus jumped naturally from bats or other animals to humans.

Even when former MI6 chief Sir Richard Dearlove spoke out publicly saying the scientists' theory should be investigated, the idea was dismissed as 'fake news.'

Over a year later, leading academics, politicians and the media finally flipped, and have begun to contemplate the possibility that COVID-19 escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China - a lab where experiments included manipulating viruses to increase their infectiousness in order to study their potential effects on humans.

I'm not claiming this paper is going to be the definitive smoking gun. I haven't even seen it yet. But I am interested in critiques of their work.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by RecoveringYuppy

I searched this thread for "Angus", "Dalg", "Birger", and "rensen". First appearance is today.

We couldn't find it because the names aren't mentioned.

They are referred to as a Norwegian and a British researcher. I found it using a search string "a vaccine will fail" or something like that now I can't remember which section of the sentence I used.

[Myriad]

Originally Posted by RecoveringYuppy

Since the sentence immediately prior to that says it more accurately but less understandably I thought he was probably just trying to dumb it down for his audience.

The prior sentence seems just as illogical. If a chain of four positive charges provides an advantage to this organism i.e. improved infectiousness in a crossover species (which seems to be part of their whole point), and doesn't prevent the protein from forming (which it obviously doesn't), why would the fact (if it is indeed a fact) that it's rare elsewhere in nature matter? What would prevent evolution from, say, two consecutive positive charges to three to four?

I think the lab leak hypothesis should be seriously considered and thoroughly investigated, but for this particular claim, either both of the reported phrasings have garbled the point, or that particular point doesn't make much sense.

[RecoveringYuppy]

Originally Posted by A quote form Skeptic Ginger's post

The elements in the virus, SARS-CoV-2, all came from bat SARS-like CoVs that circulate in nature

Is this verifiable? It seems like this point would be very persuasive in favor of recombination in nature so would lead to a greater consensus on this issue. I was under the impression this had been looked for and not found.

[RecoveringYuppy]

Originally Posted by Myriad

The prior sentence seems just as illogical. If a chain of four positive charges provides an advantage to this organism i.e. improved infectiousness in a crossover species (which seems to be part of their whole point), and doesn't prevent the protein from forming (which it obviously doesn't), why would the fact (if it is indeed a fact) that it's rare elsewhere in nature matter? What would prevent evolution from, say, two consecutive positive charges to three to four?

If the natural mechanism of protein formation can't overcome the repulsive charges but artificial mechanisms can then the statement makes sense. I have no idea if that's true though.

[Myriad]

Originally Posted by RecoveringYuppy

If the natural mechanism of protein formation can't overcome the repulsive charges but artificial mechanisms can then the statement makes sense. I have no idea if that's true though.

If the natural mechanism of protein formation can't overcome the repulsive changes, then the virus can't replicate that protein when it infects a cell. In which case it can't function as a virus.