How Did Covid-19 Begin? WaPo OpEd Claims Its Origin Story Is 'Shaky' (washingtonpost.com) 233
The story of how the novel coronavirus emerged in Wuhan, China, has produced a nasty propaganda battle between the United States and China. Columnist David Ignatius writes in an opinion piece for The Washington Post: The two sides have traded some of the sharpest charges made between two nations since the Soviet Union in 1985 falsely accused the CIA of manufacturing AIDS. U.S. intelligence officials don't think the pandemic was caused by deliberate wrongdoing. The outbreak that has now swept the world instead began with a simpler story, albeit one with tragic consequences: The prime suspect is "natural" transmission from bats to humans, perhaps through unsanitary markets.
But scientists don't rule out that an accident at a research laboratory in Wuhan might have spread a deadly bat virus that had been collected for scientific study. "Good science, bad safety" is how Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) put this theory in a Feb. 16 tweet. He ranked such a breach (or natural transmission) as more likely than two extreme possibilities: an accidental leak of an "engineered bioweapon" or a "deliberate release." Cotton's earlier loose talk about bioweapons set off a furor, back when he first raised it in late January and called the outbreak "worse than Chernobyl." Important note: "U.S. intelligence officials think there's no evidence whatsoever that the coronavirus was created in a laboratory as a potential bioweapon. Solid scientific research demonstrates that the virus wasn't engineered by humans and that it originated in bats."
In February the Post also quoted Vipin Narang, an associate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as saying that it's "highly unlikely" the general population was exposed to a virus through an accident at a lab. "We don't have any evidence for that," said Narang, a political science professor with a background in chemical engineering. That article also noted that even Senator Cotton "acknowledged there is no evidence that the disease originated at the lab."
"Instead, he suggested it's necessary to ask Chinese authorities about the possibility, fanning the embers of a conspiracy theory that has been repeatedly debunked by experts."
UPDATE (4/4/2020): While the op-ed cites a "study" (which they acknowledge was withdrawn as "not supported" by direct proof), the fact-checking site Snopes calls it instead a "document erroneously described by several media outlets as a 'scientific study'," and notes several factual errors in the document. "In sum, this paper -- which was first posted on and later deleted from the academic social networking website ResearchGate -- adds nothing but misinformation to the debate regarding the origins of the novel coronavirus and is not a real scientific study."
But scientists don't rule out that an accident at a research laboratory in Wuhan might have spread a deadly bat virus that had been collected for scientific study. "Good science, bad safety" is how Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) put this theory in a Feb. 16 tweet. He ranked such a breach (or natural transmission) as more likely than two extreme possibilities: an accidental leak of an "engineered bioweapon" or a "deliberate release." Cotton's earlier loose talk about bioweapons set off a furor, back when he first raised it in late January and called the outbreak "worse than Chernobyl." Important note: "U.S. intelligence officials think there's no evidence whatsoever that the coronavirus was created in a laboratory as a potential bioweapon. Solid scientific research demonstrates that the virus wasn't engineered by humans and that it originated in bats."
In February the Post also quoted Vipin Narang, an associate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as saying that it's "highly unlikely" the general population was exposed to a virus through an accident at a lab. "We don't have any evidence for that," said Narang, a political science professor with a background in chemical engineering. That article also noted that even Senator Cotton "acknowledged there is no evidence that the disease originated at the lab."
"Instead, he suggested it's necessary to ask Chinese authorities about the possibility, fanning the embers of a conspiracy theory that has been repeatedly debunked by experts."
UPDATE (4/4/2020): While the op-ed cites a "study" (which they acknowledge was withdrawn as "not supported" by direct proof), the fact-checking site Snopes calls it instead a "document erroneously described by several media outlets as a 'scientific study'," and notes several factual errors in the document. "In sum, this paper -- which was first posted on and later deleted from the academic social networking website ResearchGate -- adds nothing but misinformation to the debate regarding the origins of the novel coronavirus and is not a real scientific study."
"Scientists don't rule out" alien abduction (Score:5, Funny)
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Its completely plausible that the virus came from the laboratory. They work with coronaviruses.
Nope. Remember that quite a few variants of the common cold are caused by corona viruses. The family is very, very common and a lot of labs are working with them.
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No, that's incorrect. It was the other lab, 7 miles away, that studied coronaviruses. The one by the market did not [snopes.com].
Stop spreading misinformation.
Re:"Scientists don't rule out" alien abduction (Score:4, Interesting)
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Here you go: How Canadian researchers reconstituted an extinct poxvirus for $100,000 using mail-order DNA [sciencemag.org].
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I did just have a can of Ninja Vs Unicorn - seems to have worked for me (so far)
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That's silly. You need a Corona-repelling rock. I've got an extra I can sell you.
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With HIV is was too scary to believe natural origins, so people, including the president of these United States, made up a story that their god was retaliating against the gay people who deserved to die
Citation needed.
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No, the "Chinese virus" is well known. Its a variant of SARS. We just didn't know what it was when it first appeared (in the west) because China deliberately tried to cover it all up. And still are.
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Both "this is a bioweapon" and "this is a plague sent by God" scare the shit out of me more than "this is a zoonotic infection."
The US has been engaged in a propaganda war with China for the last couple years. It's not particularly surprising that the currently unfolding natural disaster became part of that propaganda, just like a new disease that appeared to show a preference for gay men became part of the US Christian right's propaganda war against homosexuals. Slashdot comments on MERS stories in 2014 re
Re: "Scientists don't rule out" alien abduction (Score:4, Insightful)
Stupidity is easy to witness on people.
So true.
When a plausible thing (like a virus escaping from a laboratory that work on virus) is compared to random bullshit to rule out said thing, you know you are talking to complete idiot.
When a plausible thing (like a coronavirus jumping to humans like SARS, MERS did) is compared to random bullshit to rule out said thing, you know you are talking to complete idiot.
So very, very true.
Hey Slashdot! You left out THIS! (Score:5, Informative)
To be clear: U.S. intelligence officials think there’s no evidence whatsoever that the coronavirus was created in a laboratory as a potential bioweapon. Solid scientific research demonstrates that the virus wasn’t engineered by humans and that it originated in bats.
So you're saying the Bats made it?! (Score:4, Funny)
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From the article:To be clear: U.S. intelligence officials think there’s no evidence whatsoever that the coronavirus was created in a laboratory as a potential bioweapon. Solid scientific research demonstrates that the virus wasn’t engineered by humans and that it originated in bats.
Nice catch! So /. is now spreading misinformation abouit covid-19....
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You're also literally replying to a comment that says "Solid scientific research demonstrates that the virus wasn’t engineered by humans." (It's a quote from TFA.)
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Did you just say.."conservative conspiracy theories " and "from the Washington Post." In the same post?
Do you divide by zero also?
I seen a scientific writeup that totally disputed (Score:5, Informative)
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/the-new-coronavirus-was-not-genetically-engineered-study-shows/ [medicalnewstoday.com]
Labs study wild viruses too (Score:3, Informative)
That only disputes whether it was "man made", i.e. a bioweapon. The lab near Wuhan was studying this same wild virus, including the gain of function from the HIV inserts and published a paper on that. You're disputing a different claim here, some people saw the gain of function from it using the HIV receptors and got excited.
So it's not inconceivable that one of their samples of wild virus escaped somehow, which is the possibility being raised here. There are other reports that the bats that carry it don
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Maybe not "definitively" but, as best I understand virus genetics and rate of mutations, it should be possible to determine with decent confidence whether the early versions of the virus were similar to the samples in the lab or not. It seems quite unlikely that it would have very close similarity (in a mutation sense) if it came from bats via an independent vector. One could probably go out and find some bats and verify that.
But in the current information climate, I'm a little concerned that this is a
Re:Labs study wild viruses too (Score:4, Interesting)
The only way this happens in nature is if one carrier organism was infected with both coronavirus variants simultaneously, a near impossibility for two species separated by half a planet. But both coronavirus samples were known to be present in the Wuhan lab, which was doing research on coronavirus in immune-compromised systems (the HIV inserts mentioned in the parent comment above.)
So, you have to use Occam's razor and ask yourself the following question:
Which is more likely?
I know which one my money is on.
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"I know which one my money is on."
Have you not accounted for the fact that China is the epicenter for pangolin trafficking, IE: the world's biggest buyer?
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Except the Chinese have this habit of finding the most endagered and wierd animals, putting them togethee in a box in a market and then eating them. Sometimes live, in the middle of that very market. The idea that these distant animals were all stuck together in a poacher's cage to be sold for big money to some limp-dicked Chinese businessman is probably more likely.
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Well, most US citizens and specially US politicians do not understand what a "fact" is or how "Science" works. Instead they believe they can change reality by just claiming repeatedly that things are actually different.
The evidence that the virus was not artificially created or tampered with is very, very solid. The only exception would be if China were decades ahead of everybody else in that area, but there is really no reason to believe that.
Re:I seen a scientific writeup that totally disput (Score:5, Funny)
Well, most US citizens and specially US politicians do not understand what a "fact" is or how "Science" works. Instead they believe they can change reality by just claiming repeatedly that things are actually different.
I'm not a fan of the whole transgender thing either.
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That this virus was NOT man made. Here is the article I read.
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/the-new-coronavirus-was-not-genetically-engineered-study-shows/ [medicalnewstoday.com]
The genetic engineered bio-weapon theories are dumb, and refuted by the evidence.
The theory from this article was quite a bit more rational:
1) It's a bat virus but bats weren't sold at the market.
2) The nearby lab was apparently collecting bat coronaviruses as recently as December.
3) There's reasons to think the lab took inadequate safety measures.
Now I'm still not convinced, Occam's good 'ol fashioned razor suggests the virus showed up in the market, so it probably originated there as well. A lab release r
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If a mistake happened in a lab that was studying the virus, which I can believe. I have seen no reputable articles as of yet on that. But it is easily conceivable.
I still think that the release of information in the beginning from ALL sources was at fault. From the Chinese government, to WHO, and also our own government. I don't know if it was down right lying on anyone's part, or if th
Re:I seen a scientific writeup that totally disput (Score:4, Interesting)
https://www.nature.com/article... [nature.com]
This sounds like a relatively sound study as to how the virus replicated and the most likely progenitor/s.
Laowhy86 has an interesting video (Score:3, Informative)
Do Slashdot readers only want to read bad news? (Score:5, Interesting)
Do Slashdot readers only want to read bad news?
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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Bad news fits their narrative, good news not so much.
Indeed, it does. Pretty bad.
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Because the story is about useless baloney. Plenty of vaccines are "showing promise in mice right now" by various biotech companies and schools, just as they did in SARS and MERS before. Likely none of them will work. By the way, there is a trial for SARS vaccine in humans that just finished phase 1, 17 years later...
But as for proven vaccines for any coronavirus on planet earth, there are zero. Get it through your skulls, the dozens of vaccines in early trial right now likely won't work.
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But as for proven vaccines for any coronavirus on planet earth, there are zero.
That's factually incorrect. There are several effective animal coronavirus vaccines against bovine coronavirus.
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I was talking about humans. Yes we can vaccinate mice and cows for several things, which is why these things get investor bucks. Then, 100% the time to date except for that SARs thing I mentioned which might flop they fail in humans (sad trombone song)
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I've been following the data since day one and still searching for a damn single piece of data that would cause me worry. If people even do respond, it's to point to the latest anecdote keeping
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Understand
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Sounds pretty much like the story about the positive vaccine test currently on the front page.
Paranoid a little?
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Increase of domestic violence.
Increase of depression.
Increase of people drinking.
Just saying. There are a ton of side affects, both good and bad that has came about because of the current recommendations to slow the threat of the virus. And a decrease of global change is not the only one.
Back to my beer, speaking of drinking.
Thanks. (Score:2)
Is the Slashdot software open source? It seems that there may be a better way to submit stories. Maybe I could be helpful.
Enginered bioweapon? (Score:2)
I really don't get the engineered bioweapon angle - this thing isn't remotely dangerous enough to be a bioweapon. I suppose there's a slim chance it could be intentionally engineered to just cause social and economic hardship rather than death, but that seems a little implausible, especially since the attacker would get hit just as hard. My understanding is that you generally you want a bioweapon to kill almost as quickly as it spreads, if not quicker, so that containment is possible for those who know it
They're not saying that (Score:3)
Some people saw the gain of function from HIV and got excited, but others pointed out that it's not that uncommon.
That said, the same lab was publishing papers on the same virus with the same gain of function. So it's hardly inconceivable that the wild virus samples could've leaked from the lab, which is the theory here (NOT the 'bioweapon' theory you're responding to).
I don't know if we'll ever know one way or the other, but I just wanted to point out that you're responding to a very different theory than
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Covid-19 was the 2nd leading cause of death in March. [cbsnews.com]
Governments don't really want to kill old people (Score:3)
The bio-weapon angle is more than likely just an attempt to shift blame by governments that were massively under-prepared in the face of a disaster everybody knew was coming [slashdot.org].
It's now come out that the current administration could have ordered machines that crank out 1.5 million N95 masks a day and didn't. I
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And in actual reality (Score:2)
Nothing is shaky here and the genome (which has been fully sequenced) pretty much rules out any artificial changes. Also, this thing is very easy to kill with disinfectant or just soap and water. There is nothing "shaky" about the origin story of this virus. There is however a lot of scummy politicians that seek to profit from the current situation.
Conspiracy Theory Pandemic (Score:2)
If this was a bio-weapon, it's about the shittiest one possible. It is highly contagious, but not particularly deadly at all, especially when considering your typical influenza i
Article is one part facts and one part slant (Score:5, Informative)
So Senator Tom Cotton said that the most likely source of the virus is "natural", and less likely but still possible was "bad safety" at a research lab. And in January he "stepped away" from impeachment hearings to try to focus attention on the coronavirus problem. And at that time he called the threat of coronavirus "worse than Chernobyl".
My reaction to all of the above is: as far as I can tell he's right about all of it. More people have already died just near my home from the coronavirus outbreak than died from Chernobyl, so IMHO that's the most obviously true thing he said.
The article quotes this with scare words: "Cotton's earlier loose talk"... it's followed by "China dished wild, irresponsible allegations of its own" which implies that Cotton was dishing wild, irresponsible allegations. It then quotes a Chinese diplomat saying soothing things, described in approving tones.
It's the Washington Post. I think it's against their editorial policy to report the facts neutrally.
My terse and slant-free summary of the article: We don't actually know how the coronavirus first infected humans. There are problems with the theory that the source was a Chinese wet market: the suspected market is a seafood market so bat isn't on the menu there. The US hasn't ruled out accidental release from a research lab (like the lab 300 yards from the suspected wet market). Nobody is seriously considering the idea that China released it deliberately.
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It's the Washington Post. I think it's against their editorial policy to report the facts neutrally.
I'm pretty sure it's against their editorial policy to report facts at all.
Not that they're even slightly unusual in that.
Re:Article is one part facts and one part slant (Score:5, Informative)
It's already been shown, and clearly on google maps that the lab isn't ANYWHERE close to the wet market. It's about 20-30KM away by car, separated by a river.
The Washington Post OpEd piece made the claim that it was "less than 300 yards". I checked the supporting link, which was to an article [dailymail.co.uk] in the Daily Mail. That shows a map with places marked on it. It shows a path that is clearly under 300 metres to a building labeled "Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention". However, when I used Google Maps to double-check, that building is not labeled. It's just a rectangle on the map. Searching Google Maps for "Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention" shows a location that is 3.7 km away (by walking a fairly direct path).
It's possible the original reporting is correct, if the unlabeled building is some kind of outpost of the lab. It's possible that the correct answer is "3.7 km" rather than "300 yards". However, I see no evidence that it's 20-30 km. Maybe you could offer some kind of evidence to support your claims?
Here's the URL from my Google Maps check:
https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Huanan+Seafood+Market,+Fazhan+Avenue,+Jianghan+District,+Wuhan,+Hubei,+China/Wuhan+Centres+for+Disease+Prevention+%26+Control,+24+Jianghan+N+Rd,+Jiang'an+District,+Wuhan,+Hubei,+China/@30.6027606,114.250545,14z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m13!4m12!1m5!1m1!1s0x342eaeb553b58fd7:0x355ff7d1fe8e8fb7!2m2!1d114.2622935!2d30.6165888!1m5!1m1!1s0x342eaee6df67e08b:0x9cbacadc65f81283!2m2!1d114.279647!2d30.589446 [google.com]
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The Daily Mail is a British tabloid newspaper specializing in providing their elderly readership with dodgy health and science stories. Wikipedia banned it as an unreliable source.
Snopes says Slashdot is wrong (Score:2, Informative)
They should have nuked Wuhan from orbit (Score:2)
It was the only way to be sure
Just to be clear, US research guidelines (Score:2)
allow handling coronavirus specimens in BSL-2 facilities as well.
If you want to culture (i.e. *grow*) viruses, you need BSL-3 facilities, as well as if you do particularly risky features like inoculate animals.
The truth won't be known for a long time. (Score:2)
Despite the astonishing speed at which molecular biology was used to tear this thing apart and figure out what it was and how it worked, the scientific detective work to get a satisfactory answer to where it came from will take a long time.
That's because outside the lab, the real world is chock-a-block with red herrings. It's so easy to put together a compellingly plausible story, but that doesn't mean the story is true.
Take the infamous Huanan Seafood wet market. There's no question that the thing is uns
I know the truth (Score:2)
The virus comes from Gotham, made by a man called Bruce Wayne.
Anyone remember the Chicago Tylenol Murders? (Score:2)
Source WIKI:
1982: "The Chicago Tylenol Murders were a series of poisoning deaths resulting from drug tampering in the Chicago metropolitan area...The victims had all taken Tylenol-branded acetaminophen capsules that had been laced with potassium cyanide"
"Hundreds of copycat attacks involving Tylenol, other over-the-counter medications, and other products also took place around the United States immediately following the Chicago deaths." - This included purposefully poisoning others and using the "Tylenol Ki
Its not the markets so much (Score:2)
Its the way the Chinese make use of bat tissue, and tissue from other exotic animals.
They turn them into chinese medicine, which is bought by people who are ill, and probably have a fully occupied immune system to start with.
It's really a viral ad campaign (Score:2)
It's a viral marketing campaign for the forthcoming mini series The Stand. Thank you, I'll be here all month. There is no veal so try the bat!
Re:Xenophobic (Score:5, Insightful)
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True. But answer me this...If the virus was found to have been caused by swallowing goldfish would we then be demonizing Fraternities who have used this as part of their hazing practices for decades?
Or blame it on foreign importers flooding the market with an inferior product?
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Hmmm...demonizing the practice...but not the practitioners?
"There has been at least one university hazing death each year from 1969 to 2017. According to Franklin College journalism professor Hank Nuwer, over 200 university hazing deaths have occurred since 1838, with 40 deaths between 2007 and 2017 alone. Alcohol poisoning is the biggest cause of death." - Source WIKI
Mattering on the social standing of the practitioners, obviously not.
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So as long as a practice is held in high regard by a superstitious population, they aren't going to demonize it. Even in the face of contradicting scientific evidence.
Chinese communists have conducted a war on various religions and religious practices for decades. They pride themselves on disabusing the hoi polloi of their old fashioned customs and beliefs. The notion that the CPC might worry about the consequences of trampling on the superstitions of their powerless subjects is laughably naive.
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Figuring out which parts of culture, ANY culture, are pointless and actually harmful to your society is how we've graduated from having ritual sacrifice, bloodletting etc.
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Suuuure. That's why more than a billion people regularly pretend to eat a dude.
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It's a step forward from actually eating a dude.
NoScript (Score:2)
I don't want to visit other web sites not owned by the initial provider.
Re:How did Cotton survive saying that? (Score:5, Informative)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
https://www.npr.org/sections/g... [npr.org]
dec 22 - Four patients treated for pneumonia of unknown cause
dec 27 - Three more, all 7 related to the market
dec 30 - First nurse infected. Human to human transmission still not deemed confirmed until jan 15
dec 30 - First media reports, China CDC notified
dec 31 - China notifies WHO, first reports on CCTV, Wuhan suggests wearing masks in public
jan 1 - Wuhan market closed
jan 3 - New virus identified
jan 3 - SARS expert in Honk Kong claims no proof of human to human transmission
jan 9 - Report says no medical staff infected, not as deadly as SARS, NYT reports no evidence of human to human transmission
jan 10 - First death
jan 12 - First tests available in Wuhan, genome sequence given to WHO
jan 15 - Wuhan HC says human to human is possible
jan 15-20 Wuhan rolls out infrared thermometers to airports, train and bus stations
jan 21 - Wuhan requires masks in public
jan 22 - Wuhan transportation shut down, Wuhan Quarantined, most of Huber quarantined
jan 23 - First hospital construction stars
jan 24 - Second hospital construction starts, 1700 medical staff sent to Wuhan
jan 26 - Schools in all China close
jan 30 - WHO declares "public health emergency of international concern"
Re: How did Cotton survive saying that? (Score:4, Informative)
Feb 29: WHO continues to advise against the application of travel or trade restrictions to countries experiencing COVID-19 outbreaks.
https://www.who.int/news-room/... [who.int]
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In the middle of January, the WHO acted like a mouthpiece for the CCP proclaiming no evidence of human-to-human transmission. [twitter.com] The blame game starts squarely at China for covering up this plague.
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To be fair, in children COVID-19 is actually significantly less deadly than the flu. The problem is, in people over 50 it's significantly more deadly.
For whatever reason children's immune systems have no problem fighting COVID-19, yet struggle more with flu. It seems to be that the key determining factor for surviving COVID-19 is the health of the cardiovascular system, so it's possibly related to that in that kids rarely have cardiovascular problems.
Still, I'm not sure why we even have this story, we know
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It's time we start holding countries that are wildlife criminals to account; the cost their habits have now had on people globally is sufficient that countries like China must be held to account for their global pillaging of the natural world and the consequences that have now stemmed from that.
"Wildlife criminal" seems like an extreme term, especially when there are no existing laws that have been violated with respect to the animals connected to Covid-19.
Who gets to decide what is allowed and what is not? Some cultures consider eating beef or pork to be sins. Should vegans get to decide? How about Jains?
Many of the animals that Americans eat are not eaten in many other countries.
Americans tend to find outrage in what others do and seek legal penalties for behavior they find offensive.
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You're wrong in that we don't know how it started. There are lots of suspicions, but nothing really solid. The "wet market" is certainly plausible, but that's all it is.
Also, I'm not aware that eating meat is how people get rabies...even indirectly.
Re:How did Cotton survive saying that? (Score:5, Informative)
Meanwhile, even at the end of February, Pelosi was touring restaurants in SF [cbslocal.com] and telling people:
She was still saying things like that a month after Trump banned travel from infected countries.
Also in February, after Trump was actually doing things to slow down the spread, the Democratic Mayor De Blasio said "New Yorkers should go about our lives, continue doing what we do." He started to warn people, but included misinformation like "You don't get it from a surface." while his Democratic Health Commissioner told the world:
So stop attempting to rewrite history that Democratic politicians were somehow superior in their early understanding of this pandemic and it all would've been different if they were in charge. Most of them were actively complaining about Trump taking measures like limiting entry into the country in order to slow things down.
Re: How did Cotton survive saying that? (Score:2)
The OP was complaining about January...
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If one assumes that the number of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic cases is several times as high as the number of reported cases, the case fatality rate may be considerably less than 1%. This suggests that the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%)
So - probably more accurate than the "OMGWTFBBQ! WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!" hysteria out there.
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My guess is that it's somewhere between 0.5% and 1%. The WHO seems to favour 1%. Besides the mortality rate, it's still more dangerous than flu because it's so easily transmitted, piling up the cases. If the world's flu cases all occurred within a month or two (never mind 5 or ten times as many) it would also be a disaster.
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From the New England Journal of Medicine [nejm.org]:
If one assumes that the number of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic cases is several times as high as the number of reported cases, the case fatality rate may be considerably less than 1%. This suggests that the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%)
So - probably more accurate than the "OMGWTFBBQ! WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!" hysteria out there.
You would need to explain chart 6 here [medium.com] Why aren't the countries at the bottom finding all these hidden cases if there are so many of them?
You would have to assume those people were infected and recovered before the testing was widespread. I don't think that could be the case in some of those places. Seems to be just wishful thinking.
Once random sample antibody testing is done, and we know the % of people already infected we will know if that's the case or not.
At the moment it is just wishful thinking, "If
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In late January the White House was still telling us that Covid 19 was "just like the flu" and would soon "go away, like magic". Cotton comparing it to a nuclear disaster does not sound like something the GOP would tolerate.
The paper from the South China institute of Technology that studied the origins of this virus when their death toll was around 500. The source of this virus - horseshoe bats - weren't native to Wuhan. They were used in 2 labs in the area - the 'Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention' and the 'Wuhan Institute of Virology'. Their final conclusion was
The killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan. Safety levels may need to be reinforced in high risk, bio-hazardous laboratories. Regulations may be taken to relocate these laboratories far away from city center and other densely populated places
So w/o getting into biological warfare conspiracy theories, this paper - written by people who get paid ultimately by the CPC - concluded that the vi
Re: How did Cotton survive saying that? (Score:3)
Got a link to that paper?
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It's a conspiracy theory because China doesn't want you to think about it. That's why Twitter has been banning anyone for months for discussing it (including Zerohedge).
Re:How did Cotton survive saying that? (Score:5, Informative)
Pretty much anything other than the meat-market explanation has an uphill battle since those markets are ideal grounds for virus spreading and jumping species. Labs, while they are a popular image from movies, are really not that great of an environment since you get these jumps when you have large numbers of individual potential opportunities for crossover, not some single 'well, it was sitting on a shelf and it spilled' event. If there is a billion to one chance of jumping, you need those exposures over and over and over and over for it to happen.
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Apparently one way virologists induce the viruses they're studying to mutate is by infecting a large number of small mammals, such as ferrets. Infect one animal and wait for the virus to replicate. Extract some, check it for interesting mutations, and infect another ferret with it. Do it again a few thousand times. Although this is technically "genetic engineering"--in the same way breeding dogs is--direct genetic manipulation would show signs of whatever mad science involved, while the nightmare virus
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The actual quote is... "It's going to disappear. One day it's like a miracle, it will disappear," Trump told attendees at an African American History Month reception in the White House Cabinet Room." - Source: CNN
He later said... "Speaking about the 15 individuals diagnosed with the coronavirus on US soil, Trump said that "the 15 will soon be down to three, four.""
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Precious Bodily Fluids.
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Half his content is about threats to your scrotum.
I've only ever heard of Alex Jones on Slashdot, so I don't really know what his content is like, but I'm curious: what percentage of his content did you read (or watch? I'm not clear if his content is written or video) in order to arrive at this 50% estimate?
I assume you wouldn't have posted this without a pretty accurate way of estimating what the fraction is.
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Here ya go [rationalwiki.org]
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Was he the one selling toothpaste to neutralize it?
Yup, he was. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/0... [nytimes.com]
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