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Im not discounting the info you’ve posted from the new scientist and appreciate it.

But going back to your first paragraph regarding the credibility of the sources of this story - according to Fox, this story originated from The Washington Post.


Was it you who posted that NY Times article about American cases coming from Europe not Asia? Did you read that? That article also talked about this conspiracy story about the virus being leaked, and dismissed it.

The genome of virus is being scrutinised by virologists all over the world in an effort to understand it and find a way to fight it. Not one of those teams has reported seeing anything that doesn't look right. No-one studying the genome has said anything approaching "Hmm... Wait a minute! This shouldn't be here! here's something going on here..." which is what would happen if the genome had been messed with by humans. The genome of this virus is completely in keeping with what would be expected in a bat coronavirus.



That FOX link linked to the Daily bloody Mail. I've now clicked on the browse for free thing for the Washington Post and I'll copy the linked article below. You'll see that it does not say that the virus came from the Wuhan lab. It says that there were concerns.
 
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State Department cables warned of safety issues at Wuhan lab studying bat coronaviruses
A woman wearing a protective suit at a hospital in Wuhan, China.
A woman wearing a protective suit at a hospital in Wuhan, China. (Aly Song/Reuters)
Image without a caption
By
Josh Rogin
Columnist
April 14, 2020 at 11:00 a.m. GMT+1
Two years before the novel coronavirus pandemic upended the world, U.S. Embassy officials visited a Chinese research facility in the city of Wuhan several times and sent two official warnings back to Washington about inadequate safety at the lab, which was conducting risky studies on coronaviruses from bats. The cables have fueled discussions inside the U.S. government about whether this or another Wuhan lab was the source of the virus — even though conclusive proof has yet to emerge.
In January 2018, the U.S. Embassy in Beijing took the unusual step of repeatedly sending U.S. science diplomats to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), which had in 2015 become China’s first laboratory to achieve the highest level of international bioresearch safety (known as BSL-4). WIV issued a news release in English about the last of these visits, which occurred on March 27, 2018. The U.S. delegation was led by Jamison Fouss, the consul general in Wuhan, and Rick Switzer, the embassy’s counselor of environment, science, technology and health. Last week, WIV erased that statement from its website, though it remains archived on the Internet.
Full coverage of the coronavirus pandemic
What the U.S. officials learned during their visits concerned them so much that they dispatched two diplomatic cables categorized as Sensitive But Unclassified back to Washington. The cables warned about safety and management weaknesses at the WIV lab and proposed more attention and help. The first cable, which I obtained, also warns that the lab’s work on bat coronaviruses and their potential human transmission represented a risk of a new SARS-like pandemic.
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“During interactions with scientists at the WIV laboratory, they noted the new lab has a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory,” states the Jan. 19, 2018, cable, which was drafted by two officials from the embassy’s environment, science and health sections who met with the WIV scientists. (The State Department declined to comment on this and other details of the story.)

Opinion | U.S. diplomatic cables warned of Wuhan lab safety issues. The world needs answers.





Global Opinions writer Josh Rogin has obtained a 2018 U.S. diplomatic cable urging Washington to better support a Chinese lab researching bat coronaviruses. (Joshua Carroll, Kate Woodsome, Josh Rogin/The Washington Post)
The Chinese researchers at WIV were receiving assistance from the Galveston National Laboratory at the University of Texas Medical Branch and other U.S. organizations, but the Chinese requested additional help. The cables argued that the United States should give the Wuhan lab further support, mainly because its research on bat coronaviruses was important but also dangerous.
As the cable noted, the U.S. visitors met with Shi Zhengli, the head of the research project, who had been publishing studies related to bat coronaviruses for many years. In November 2017, just before the U.S. officials’ visit, Shi’s team had published research showing that horseshoe bats they had collected from a cave in Yunnan province were very likely from the same bat population that spawned the SARS coronavirus in 2003.
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“Most importantly,” the cable states, “the researchers also showed that various SARS-like coronaviruses can interact with ACE2, the human receptor identified for SARS-coronavirus. This finding strongly suggests that SARS-like coronaviruses from bats can be transmitted to humans to cause SARS-like diseases. From a public health perspective, this makes the continued surveillance of SARS-like coronaviruses in bats and study of the animal-human interface critical to future emerging coronavirus outbreak prediction and prevention.”
The research was designed to prevent the next SARS-like pandemic by anticipating how it might emerge. But even in 2015, other scientists questioned whether Shi’s team was taking unnecessary risks. In October 2014, the U.S. government had imposed a moratorium on funding of any research that makes a virus more deadly or contagious, known as “gain-of-function” experiments.
As many have pointed out, there is no evidence that the virus now plaguing the world was engineered; scientists largely agree it came from animals. But that is not the same as saying it didn’t come from the lab, which spent years testing bat coronaviruses in animals, said Xiao Qiang, a research scientist at the School of Information at the University of California at Berkeley.
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“The cable tells us that there have long been concerns about the possibility of the threat to public health that came from this lab’s research, if it was not being adequately conducted and protected,” he said.
There are similar concerns about the nearby Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention lab, which operates at biosecurity level 2, a level significantly less secure than the level-4 standard claimed by the Wuhan Insititute of Virology lab, Xiao said. That’s important because the Chinese government still refuses to answer basic questions about the origin of the novel coronavirus while suppressing any attempts to examine whether either lab was involved.
Sources familiar with the cables said they were meant to sound an alarm about the grave safety concerns at the WIV lab, especially regarding its work with bat coronaviruses. The embassy officials were calling for more U.S. attention to this lab and more support for it, to help it fix its problems.
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“The cable was a warning shot,” one U.S. official said. “They were begging people to pay attention to what was going on.”
No extra assistance to the labs was provided by the U.S. government in response to these cables. The cables began to circulate again inside the administration over the past two months as officials debated whether the lab could be the origin of the pandemic and what the implications would be for the U.S. pandemic response and relations with China.
Inside the Trump administration, many national security officials have long suspected either the WIV or the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention lab was the source of the novel coronavirus outbreak. According to the New York Times, the intelligence community has provided no evidence to confirm this. But one senior administration official told me that the cables provide one more piece of evidence to support the possibility that the pandemic is the result of a lab accident in Wuhan.
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“The idea that it was just a totally natural occurrence is circumstantial. The evidence it leaked from the lab is circumstantial. Right now, the ledger on the side of it leaking from the lab is packed with bullet points and there’s almost nothing on the other side,” the official said.
As my colleague David Ignatius noted, the Chinese government’s original story — that the virus emerged from a seafood market in Wuhan — is shaky. Research by Chinese experts published in the Lancet in January showed the first known patient, identified on Dec. 1, had no connection to the market, nor did more than one-third of the cases in the first large cluster. Also, the market didn’t sell bats.
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Shi and other WIV researchers have categorically denied this lab was the origin for the novel coronavirus. On Feb. 3, her team was the first to publicly report the virus known as 2019-nCoV was a bat-derived coronavirus.
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The Chinese government, meanwhile, has put a total lockdown on information related to the virus origins. Beijing has yet to provide U.S. experts with samples of the novel coronavirus collected from the earliest cases. The Shanghai lab that published the novel coronavirus genome on Jan. 11 was quickly shut down by authorities for “rectification.” Several of the doctors and journalists who reported on the spread early on have disappeared.
On Feb. 14, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for a new biosecurity law to be accelerated. On Wednesday, CNN reported the Chinese government has placed severe restrictions requiring approval before any research institution publishes anything on the origin of the novel coronavirus.
The origin story is not just about blame. It’s crucial to understanding how the novel coronavirus pandemic started because that informs how to prevent the next one. The Chinese government must be transparent and answer the questions about the Wuhan labs because they are vital to our scientific understanding of the virus, said Xiao.
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We don’t know whether the novel coronavirus originated in the Wuhan lab, but the cable pointed to the danger there and increases the impetus to find out, he said.
“I don’t think it’s a conspiracy theory. I think it’s a legitimate question that needs to be investigated and answered,” he said. “To understand exactly how this originated is critical knowledge for preventing this from happening in the future.”
 
Sure I read somewhere on here mention that Trump has hinted recently about the virus originating from a lab.

Anyway, it may have originated from some leaked (intelligence) cables according to this:


did we not ban Jazz for posting bat shit conspiracy ballocks even when we were not in a global pandemic
 
Was it you who posted that NY Times article about American cases coming from Europe not Asia? Did you read that? That article also talked about this conspiracy story about the virus being leaked, and dismissed it.
..
It was me that posted that. The analysis of the virus's dna was persuasive that it came from bats, horseshoe bats iirc and they argued a bit that this implied it hadn't come from a lab. But, and as elbows commented, that does not mean it couldn't have been being studied in a lab and escaped from there into the environment.
 
It was me that posted that. The analysis of the virus's dna was persuasive that it came from bats, horseshoe bats iirc and they argued a bit that this implied it hadn't come from a lab. But, and as elbows commented, that does not mean it couldn't have been being studied in a lab and escaped from there into the environment.


That's true. We can't be sure of anything. But this idea that it was being turned into a bioweapon or being made more virulent or whatever , so far as I can see there is zero evidence for that.
 
There has been some positive news from all of this :)



It's too late though.


 
did we not ban Jazz for posting bat shit conspiracy ballocks even when we were not in a global pandemic

TBF Jazzz's bat shit conspiracy ballocks at least qualified as bat shit conspiracy ballocks. All this "we knew about the danger at the Wuhan lab in 2018" thing they are pushing does is make Trump look even more to blame than he did before. For one of Jazzz's theories to be equivalent to that he'd have had to argue that 9/11 was certainly faked because steel reinforced concrete only ever burns after someone crashes airliners into massive buildings, or something.
 
That's true. We can't be sure of anything. But this idea that it was being turned into a bioweapon or being made more virulent or whatever , so far as I can see there is zero evidence for that.
I agree, the researchers were I think looking for evidence the genome had been tweaked by humans but what they found persuaded them it did originate from the horseshoe bat.
 
aye true at least Jazz would of supported his sources till the very end


not just go "i did not read it because it behind a *easily breached * Paywall"

:(
 
There are several plausible lab theories, as well as a number of less plausible ones. There isnt enough actual evidence floating around for me to invest very much time on the subject at the moment, but I have already provided some background info as to why certain aspects are plausible, that still applies when we are talking about a virus that hasnt been deliberately altered by humans in a lab.
 
As this is in a roundabout work related

it not a viable weapon as it does not have a high enough death rate / infection capability

maybe if it was a lab fuck up but that would only be due to drawing blood from a patient

someone was attempting to find a treatment for *seriously unlikely *


plus already 3 or more mutations around the world

this family of virus has cross over into humans with 2 cycles of infection in the last 20 years






:hmm:
 
Well without spending too much time repeating myself, reasons why I would consider myself to be foolish if I ruled out lab accident at this stage include:

The lab in Wuhan was famous for researching SARS-like viruses, including being the team who found bats in a cave in another province that had coronaviruses similar to SARS, and spent 5 years taking anal swabs from those bats.

The main SARS outbreak was in 2003. But later in 2003 and a couple of times in 2004, small clusters of cases popped up elsewhere that were traced back to lab workers accidentally getting infected and then spreading it to some other people. The Wuhan lab was not one of these, it was not even built at the time, but it demonstrates the ability for these sorts of viruses to pose biosecurity issues.

These things are not evidence of anything, they are background info that forces me to keep an open mind on the subject, regardless of what dodgy politicians and media may do with the theory.
 
Coronavirus in Africa

Africa could be next epicentre, WHO warns
UN officials also say it is likely the pandemic will kill at least 300,000 people in Africa and push nearly 30 million into poverty.

The past week in Africa has seen a sharp rise in coronavirus cases.
..
The UN Economic Commission for Africa - which warned 300,000 could die - called for a $100bn (£80bn) safety net for the continent, including halting external debt payments.
..
North Africa is the worst affected region. Algeria, Egypt and Morocco have all had more than 2,000 cases and at least 100 deaths. Algeria has had the most deaths, with 348.
Elsewhere, South Africa has also had more than 2,000 cases, with 48 deaths, while the continent's most populous nation, Nigeria, has had 442 cases and 13 confirmed deaths out of a population of some 200 million.
from 17/04/2020 Africa could be next coronavirus epicentre - WHO

And

Coronavirus stats across Africa: 18,400+ cases, 966 deaths, 4,344 recoveries
There are now more than over 18,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus across the continent, with a number of African countries imposing a range of prevention and containment measures against the spread of the pandemic.

According to the latest data by the John Hopkins University and Africa Center for Disease Control on COVID-19 in Africa, the breakdown remains fluid as countries confirm cases as and when. The whole of Africa has rising cases with only two countries holding out as of April 17.
from 17/04/2020 Coronavirus stats across Africa: 18,400+ cases, 966 deaths, 4,344 recoveries | Africanews
 
You know MERS or the virus MERS-CoV

was not from a china lab right?

Natural explanations are plausible too. I didnt say they werent.

Anyway this article is not too bad. My current position on this subject is the same as these quotes.


Filippa Lentzos, biosecurity researcher at King's College London, said while there is currently no proof for the lab accident theory, there is also "no real evidence" that the virus came from the wet market.

"For me, the pandemic origin is still an open question," said Mr Lentzos.

There are some indications "that could point to a potential lab accident from basic scientific research", she said. "But all of this needs considerable investigation for anyone to say anything with any certainty on the pandemic origins."

David Heymann, professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, also said there was no evidence about its origin but it is "closely related to a bat virus".

"There are many theories of how humans could've been infected, and I don't think any of them are able to be substantiated at present."
 
Hey elbow you been a useful source of information for people by way of the thread

and this is your thread so i'm not casting aspersions

but if someone on here is going to link to fox news or other bat shit plan ballocks


and then refuse to at least explain or support their sources

they are an asshat

:)
 
Sure, I'm mostly interested in the underlying possibilities, and trying to resist the temptation to find certainty where there is currently none to be found, rather than what arseholes do with their theories. When the theories come up I often take the opportunity to talk about them, regardless of the thread context at the time.

I am taking a break this weekend though :)
 
This may be concerning


What the WHO also said, you can watch their press briefing - I linked to it in this thread, is that countries expecting that a new antibody test will show that a large number of their populations have had the virus and are now immune are likely to be disappointed as evidence seems to show that far fewer members of their population will likely turn out to have recovered from an infection. Also so those governments hoping for a level of herd immunity are also likely to be dissapointed.
 
I am a little concerned about the amount of learning that UK government is doing from how other countries around the world are tackling covid-19. Valance claimed at least once during No 10 press briefings that they are regularly in touch with their international counterparts.

But no one has yet asked him about the country featured on his chart of fatalities with the lowest level of deaths, which is South Korea. And he has not mentioned that he has learnt anything from South Korea which might be the only country now which has tackled the virus without so far resorting to a lockdown of some kind.

South Korea has been using testing contact tracing and isolation in a big way from the start.

I suppose we may find out if that is in his thinking if we approach a relaxation of the lockdown measures. If a relaxation is met with an army of contact tracers, adequate testing capacity for public testing and new guidelines for the general public. I don't see any evidence of the army of contact tracers being recruited or trained, there are a lot of newly unemployed, furloughed people and there is the military, so an army of tracers is possible. But there is no evidence of preparation for such an initiative.
 
Marty1

Look at that last paragraph.

Trash stories get perpetuated by the press preying on the credulity of their readers. And those stories get passed around like a virus of stupid. Please don't be a vector for the stupid Marty1

In one of the very recent WH pressers a journalist brought this question up with Trump as to whether the virus originated from a lab in Wuhan and Trump alluded that there was an investigation ongoing into this.

From 8mins 54 secs.



Looks like this lab theory is originating from The White House.
 
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