It actually answers your question in the bitty bit you quoted.HHhmm........now why would they stop funding??
US stops funding to Wuhan lab scrutinized over possible Covid lab leak
A US review found the Wuhan Institute of Virology 'is not compliant with federal regulations and is not presently responsible'.metro.co.uk
Covid-19 most likely came from a lab leak,,,,,,,,,duh
- Thread starter lomotil
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It comes across a passive aggressive approach to try show that there is a hidden motivation for cancelling the funding. Given the obsession of some to try to prove Trump was correct about the lab leak, people resort to all sorts of weak argument styles.I know sarcasm doesnt work on internet, but come on dude that was a layup
I know I know.. "just asking questions" and "look here isn't this interesting."
Why would a US agency stop funding research in their main geopolitical rival's labs? Is that a real question or are you just still desperately looking for a way to 'prove' your gut feeling?HHhmm........now why would they stop funding??
US stops funding to Wuhan lab scrutinized over possible Covid lab leak
A US review found the Wuhan Institute of Virology 'is not compliant with federal regulations and is not presently responsible'.
They don't have facts or evidence, so "just asking questions" and "look here isn't this interesting" and "the implication" is what they use.
The Ongoing Mystery of Covid’s Origin (Published 2023)
We still don’t know how the pandemic started. Here's what we do know — and why it matters.
This should be an unlocked version.
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I'm confused. We now have academic virologists saying they were encouraged (ding-ding research $$$) early on to state the virus was not a lab leak. There are emails floating around stating their doubts about what they were telling the public at the time.
I don't understand what people are actually arguing here. I'm thinking some here took a deep dive in 2020 dispelling the lab leak theory. In my opinion, far too deep for laymen. When the scientific community began walking back earlier statements, there was very little mea culpa from these members.
Instead of admitting academics followed politics and most the media was less than inquisitive, we seem to get a steady diet of obfuscation on these pages. On the vast world wide web, you can always find contradictory opinions to everything.
You are certainly welcome to clarify what happened and what you think is currently happening.
What is currently happening is (as that NYTimes article concludes) is not a contest, in the public domain, between bodies of evidence, but a contest between stories.
The lab leak is a better story and so in the asymmetric information space where narrative is more important, (and without any kind of absolutely definitive evidence that no one could dispute available) it thrives despite remaining the less-supported of the explanations.
Yes, but even that itself is a narrative and not proof. It didn't help for academic virologists to rush to answer the call and state that it wasn't a lab leak when they had doubts privately. Then the entire social media platforms censoring the lab leak theory was a fiasco.
Why was there so much effort expended to try to push the public towards a disputable conclusion?
I'm not sure what it is about our time, but it seems as if our institutions grab for the most convenient answers and even double-down on them when necessary. Perhaps this was always the case in the past, but the internet can cast doubts far, wide and quickly. I think these questions of natural origin deserved more attention from the beginning.
Thankfully scientists deal in evidence, not narrative. Scientists might suspect that the lab protocols were lax and there could have been a leak but they're not going to promote that claim without evidence.
The evidence counters the idea of it being a manipulated virus and the geographic studies of the outbreak show it focussed a couple dozen km away from the lab at the market.
There wasn't really.
There was a LOT of effort to push the lab leak and a lot of it was mixed in with obvious bullshit.
Even the Proximal Origins paper acknowledges lab leak can't be ruled out and calls for more investigations, but it got demonized anyway.
Which puts a lot of context to their discussions about how whatever they write will be used in bad faith given the political environment.
All we have right now is the evidence we have found.
That still - even more so today - supports the zoonotic transfer more than the lab escape, but doesn't rule a good handful of the various lab escape theories out. (Some of them have become less and less likely.)
Really, you should read that NYTimes piece, its long but does a pretty good job of showing the timeline and summarizing what has and hasn't been found.
I agree.
The natural origin (which was deeply embarrassing for China) should have been allowed to be investigated thoroughly and completely from the start, but that's all too late now.
As for the "institutions grab for convenient answers", yes, this has always been true.
It takes a lot of effort to fight that because the population tends not to like messy answers and that makes the institutions behave even worse because they start tailoring their answers to anticipate the fact that the general population won't like a messy answer.
It's a vicious cycle.
You continue to be a useful idiot with your predictable unflushed toilet bowl hyperbole. Scientists and yes they are scientist at the Wuhan Institute of Virology for whatever reasons destroyed and or obscured access all of their scientific experiments associated with their dangerous experimentation on infecting human cells with various Coronavirus at the onset at the onset of the pandemic.
On the payroll of the PRC are you or just hopelessly obtuse ?
It seems like the natural origin-lab leak debate still has the political partisan overhang that continues to trigger reflexive and exuberant reactions.
I am concerned about what China's is doing with virus research. I think people need to understand the risks here. It doesn't make one a racist or a right wing extremist to harbor these concerns.
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It was demonstrated to be a promoted narrative from the scientific community in the early days of the global outbreak. It has led to concerns that the lab-leak possibility was abandoned too quickly by researchers. We went from proximal origin being promoted almost exclusively by the scientific community to now the most likely possibility.
Here is an excerpt from a WSJ opinion piece quoting a prominent researcher's email:
So why did they publish a paper denying that laboratory origin was plausible? The answer may lie in their messages. In early February 2020, Mr. Rambaut wrote: “Given the s— show that would happen if anyone serious accused the Chinese of even accidental release, my feeling is we should say that given there is no evidence of a specifically engineered virus, we cannot possibly distinguish between natural evolution and escape so we are content to ascribing it to natural processes.”
This doesn't prove the lab leak theory, but it bears out that proximal origin was the chosen narrative from the beginning days.
Not to be a stickler, but now where do you suppose this evidence comes from? Do you think WHO went and canvassed neighborhoods in Wuhan? It's all well and good to consider this information, but I think it also helps to be skeptical of information provided solely by China. After all, China's actions in the early days of the virus do not give anyone much confidence.
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It does.
It's been a major impediment.
Not at all.
But "there are concerns about biosafety in all virus research" isn't the way the lab leak has been discussed.
You see it on the fringes, sure, because it is a long standing concern people have always had. So that discussion still goes on. It's just basically invisible from the lab leak people's actual discussions other than in a sensationalist way and the general statement of "It could happen, therefore you saying there isn't evidence that is what happened is you denying reality," which isn't helpful.
And yet even their final paper still says further evidence can change that and it can't be ruled out.
Making it pretty hard to hinge a whole "Proximal Origins paper crushed and suppressed lab leak discourse" theory on them discussing back and forth how to make the final wording of what they considered the least likely scenario.
It's especially ironic that they are basically shading it because they fear it will be used in bad faith and here we are with people using their concerns about that in bad faith.
But this just becomes the special pleading of "any information from China was influenced by China so therefore there is no evidence I have to give weight to if it contradicts my priors."
The fact is that what evidence we have - limited thought it is - remains more supportive of the zoonotic transfer.
If the only answer to that is "what if we don't have all the evidence" then fine - no one disagrees. But that is why people say zoonotic is most likely, but lab leak can't be ruled out and additional evidence can change people's minds. Without that additional evidence, though, there is an issue.
I'm proud to follow what science says rather than just making whatever random guess fits my agenda.
Yes it does. The Trump partisans and the conspiracy nuts need to believe that it was a lab leak because either that's what Dear leader said or because they need to feel more special than the rest of the world. there are also people out there who will shit on Trump for making his absolutely unsupported claims because he's Trump.
The rest of us will look at the evidence. As of now, the evidence we have available makes the market the epicentre which makes a lab leak less likely. If evidence comes along to change that, I'll listen. As of now, the closest to evidence you guys have is maybe a couple lab workers went to the doctor with something respiratory during flu season.
