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I’ll add to that another piece from bulletin.org. I was thinking of you Clark and this thread as I was reading it.
The origin of COVID: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box at Wuhan?Excellent article ET.
Peter Daszak
– It later turned out that the Lancet letter had been organized and drafted by Peter Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance of New York. Daszak’s organization funded coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. If the SARS2 virus had indeed escaped from research he funded, Daszak would be potentially culpable. This acute conflict of interest was not declared to the Lancet’s readers. To the contrary, the letter concluded, “We declare no competing interests.”
Hmm.
– …All these conjectures are possible, but strained. Proponents of a lab leak have a simpler explanation. SARS2 was adapted to human cells from the start because it was grown in humanized mice or in lab cultures of human cells, just as described in Daszak’s grant proposal. Its genome shows little diversity because the hallmark of lab cultures is uniformity.
– Proponents of laboratory escape joke that of course the SARS2 virus infected an intermediary host species before spreading to people, and that they have identified it — a humanized mouse from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
COVID-19:
Created by outsourcing [1], distributed by globalisation [2].
[1] – The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
[2] – Trivially obvious.Localism NOW!
Its similarity to ‘smartphone’ development etc. is striking; sponsored, commissioned and financed by the US, actually manufactured in China to exploit lax labour and environmental regulation, distributed and proliferated by globalisation.
I knew it. Hence the connection with 5G!
O₂ absorbs radiation in the 5G wavelength range, don’t they do smartphones too? 😀
I apologise for being off topic but we got to smartphones. Our wonderful Irish Data Protection Comission who have been dragging their feet over EU-US data transfers for the last 7 years have been told to get on wth it by the Irish High Court.
Decision by Irish High Court: DPC must now implement CJEU judgment and stop Facebook’s EU-US data transfers.Eh, don’t hold your breath.
The lab-leak cover-up:
– ‘The Seeker’ is a member of Drastic, an informal guerrilla group of internet sleuths, scientists and data experts who have spent the past year scouring a multitude of digital sources for such vital pieces of evidence. Some members have expertise in areas such as microbiology, genetics and virology. Others are data specialists, engineers or simply obsessed with discovering the truth about the origin of this wretched pandemic. Some hide their identities; others are open.
https://unherd.com/2021/04/the-covid-dissidents-taking-on-china/
A very detailed article about the likely origin of SARS-CoV-2, with many links to scientific papers and articles:
June 4, 2021 – by Jonathan Latham and Allison Wilson
A Chinese PhD Thesis Sheds Important New Light On The Origin of the COVID-19 Coronavirus
Clark
Caution is needed here. I have skimmed through this and it of course is interesting but of course very difficult to confirm all of these documents. The cause of the caution is this.
I am aware that one should not address the man but the ball. But Latham and Wilson are basically plant geneticists whose main field of interest has been on GMO crops and are active GMO activists, which is itself not a problem as long as this activism is based on science and facts. But this article here is baffling:“Since sequencing the human genome, genetic researchers have searched intensively but unearthed little evidence to suggest that inherited genes cause common diseases. For such diseases, which include heart disease, stroke, cancers, diabetes, and disorders such as autism, ADHD and dementia, as well as mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and depression, significant genetic causation can now be ruled out with a high degree of confidence.”
I am aware of some other proper scientific studies addressing some of the findings that may point out to a lab escape route and also of the argument that this is still a possibility but there has not been any actual proof, it remains a hypothesis. I am also aware that the zoonotic origin remains incompletely explained because no intermediate host has been identified. But it is really important to check sources. Many of the scientific references that Latham and Willis quote are in some cases not from proper peer reviewed publications, and until there is proper identification of the MSC and PhD theses they have translated are published, I remain skeptical.
SA, caution is always needed. Your citation of Latham and Wilson is itself based on articles in Nature and Science, see the article’s footnote (1).
If data has been hidden, all anyone will be able to find is evidence of a cover-up, since scientific papers shouldn’t stand if based upon hidden data.
I’ll remain sceptical too, but the initial campaign to dismiss lab origin as a conspiracy theory is a stain upon the scientific establishment – and please note my use of the word ‘establishment’ rather than ‘community’. But with effort, stains can be cleansed.
The supremacy of neoliberalism corrupts everything, so we must accept that it also corrupts science. On the other hand, those who offhandedly dismiss science in support of their conspiracy theories must likewise accept that science’s continual reference to evidence gives it a far greater degree of accuracy than other spheres, most notably politics.
Whatever the outcome of all this there is a very strong message here, that science and scientists now have the ability to produce genetic manipulations of viruses and that some of these ‘gain of function’ manipulations are very dangerous and have extremely serious implications, either by design or by accident. But sadly this controversy is not addressing this issue in the sense that it is being highly politicized and highjacked by various vested interest groups, including conspiracy theorists. It would be refreshing if a strong group of scientists come out openly and address this question and demand the end to these and other types of research which weaponizes science to the detriment and not to the benefit of mankind.
I am in basic agreement with you that ‘the establishment’ and its sway on permissibility on views and money distribution, is a major driver of some of the ‘scientific’ views. Also it is not clear as to what extent there is some collusion or some subcontracting going on between the US and China in all of this, as some of the scientists discrediting the lab escape theory are themselves involved in these collaborations.
SA, we seem to be pretty much in agreement.
– “…these and other types of research which weaponizes science to the detriment and not to the benefit of mankind.”
The stated objective of such experiments is to run evolution forward, to discover viral dangers in the lab before they foist themselves upon us from nature, and possibly develop vaccines in advance. But the cost/benefit assessment is highly contentious; for it to remain in humanity’s favour we have to be almost certain that they can never escape, but that can never be a certainty.
But you know how these things are. Studying nature is utterly fascinating, and pursuing a research project can border on obsession; in fact, obsession can be the driving force behind the best research possible. It is entirely human for the best scientists in the field to defend their research domain, even to the extent of behaving irrationally. Scientists are human.
Some excellent articles on the SARS-CoV-2 lab-leak versus natural origin hypotheses. Nicholas Wade, who has worked on the staff of Nature and Science, compares the scientific cases for each – this article from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has already been linked on this thread, by ET on the previous page and in my May 19 comment above:
https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-people-or-nature-open-pandoras-box-at-wuhan/
Katherine Eban at Vanity Fair looks into political wrangling behind the scenes, with links to some significant government documents – Also, scientists sending each other death mail! –
Very lengthy, highly detailed, in-depth blog post which I haven’t even attempted to read yet; includes masses of links:
C: “Some excellent articles on the SARS-CoV-2 lab-leak versus natural origin hypotheses.
This is no good at all Clark! Come on, where is the 2-hour youtube video? Why don’t we have someone speaking very authoritatively – at length – on a subject for which they are not qualified?
There’s not even the sinister background music, evidence-free claims, hints at conspiracies being hatched by dark forces – and I’m starting to doubt your sources are of a far-right persuasion, with a view to concluding Trump is a saviour leading us all to truth & freedom.
No, sorry. This fails all the important tests for imparting information on a subject this complex.
Clark
Some of the memes in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists are somewhat reminiscent of those repeated by CTs, in that Daszak who has devoted a lot of energy to predicting pandemics and research on viruses, is somewhat carrying out a major coverup in plain sight. It goes without saying that top scientists in a field have a vested interest in getting resources for their research but I am not sure whether that means they lose all scruples. So we now have the hate figure of Daszak and also he manages to terrorize anyone who disagrees with him, and there is therefore a massive conspiracy of silence engendered by fear of retaliation. This is what the first part of this article you have linked to says.
But particularly galling is this particular paragraph which I have to quote in full for context:
“On December 9, 2019, before the outbreak of the pandemic became generally known, Daszak gave an interview in which he talked in glowing terms of how researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology had been reprogramming the spike protein and generating chimeric coronaviruses capable of infecting humanized mice.
“And we have now found, you know, after 6 or 7 years of doing this, over 100 new SARS-related coronaviruses, very close to SARS,” Daszak says around minute 28 of the interview. “Some of them get into human cells in the lab, some of them can cause SARS disease in humanized mice models and are untreatable with therapeutic monoclonals and you can’t vaccinate against them with a vaccine. So, these are a clear and present danger….”
“Daszak: Well I think … coronaviruses — you can manipulate them in the lab pretty easily. Spike protein drives a lot of what happen with coronavirus, in zoonotic risk. So you can get the sequence, you can build the protein, and we work a lot with Ralph Baric at UNC to do this. Insert into the backbone of another virus and do some work in the lab. So you can get more predictive when you find a sequence. You’ve got this diversity. Now the logical progression for vaccines is, if you are going to develop a vaccine for SARS, people are going to use pandemic SARS, but let’s insert some of these other things and get a better vaccine.”
I have highlighted a passage which is a misquote because the article of the bulletin gives a link to the interview and at around 30 minutes Daszak says “… people aren’t going to use pandemic SARS”. So what he is saying is that you use a backbone of another virus which you can limit either with antibodies or in other ways rather than using the actual manipulated virus – a completely different meaning. This is manipulation and is found elsewhere and is similar to those smoking-gun sensational declarations by CTS.
There are other assumptions in this article and you would really have to be an expert to detect this sort of manipulation.
But let us look at what is being implied here: Scientists who have devoted a lot of energy to prevent epidemics, knowingly cause one through carelessness in a lab escape. They cover this up, thereby delaying some vital pieces of information that could save the world, and in so doing cause millions of people to die, in order to save their reputations. They are aided and abetted by governments of different colours and interests, but who cares, they are mad scientists who want this sense of power and control. Sounds familiar?
SA, I agree that’s a very significant typo, and most unfortunate that it seems to have got into an echo chamber. If I had more time I’d write to the Bulletin etc; they’re reputable publications so I expect they’d publish corrections.
However, if Daszak dislikes the accusations about him he has a very simple remedy which is to open his database of bat viruses; science is supposed to be about full disclosure of data, is it not? Instead he has made matters worse for himself by organising that letter making smears of conspiracy theory, and pretending to have no conflict of interest. Daszak could also mitigate the rampant politicisation and China-bashing – the US already has a copy of the genetic database that got taken off-line in China, but Daszak holds the publication rights over it.
Why hasn’t he released it? Maybe he merely thinks it’s worth a lot of money, in which case it’s up to him whether he thinks it’s worth all the accusations. But with so many dead and so much economic hardship, he has no right telling anyone to shut up about it.
here’s a new one to chew over,
I’ll leave it to people with more time on their hands to assure me it’s all bollox.Corona Ausschuss – Ausweichkanal: Sitzung 60: Die Zeit ist kein flacher Kreis (YouTube)
Those crazy conspiracists are bleeting on about some patent professional ranting about Corona patents & Fauci, PCR as a publicity rather than clinical tool & the fraud of variants?!?
We need to robustly challenge this murderous attack on our intellects. Together we can do it!!
That video has been posted. It seems there have been many patents especially in Veterinary medicine. The origins of Sars-Cov-2 is still inconclusive.
I’ve listened to the bloke in the bow tie for a few minutes. He makes no clear distinction between ‘coronavirus’ as a family of viruses, and ‘coronavirus’ used colloquially since 2020 to mean specifically SARS-CoV-2. Yes, there must be loads of patents associated with coronaviruses, going back decades. At Wikipedia, there are many references to scientific papers concerning attempts to make vaccines against various coronaviruses.
I can’t be bothered to listen to such mush. If he has seen a patent with precisely the sequence of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, could a believer please just post a link to that specific patent so that I can check for myself? That would be significant, but I’ve followed one of these wild goose chases before and it was false.
Let’s be clear; this is conspiracy theory. Why? Because as soon as the genetic sequence of SARS-CoV-2 was published early in 2020, the virology, immunology and genomics communities started searching for previous occurrences of the sequence, and finding its closest known relatives. If Google had immediately presented twenty examples from registered patents, it would have been all over the scientific literature unless the vast majority of those scientists were conspiring to conceal it.
The rulers of China are on edge after the U.S.A. spy agencies somehow managed to secure a giant catalogue of genetic information from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
It is thought that access to a huge amount of genetic information could finally reveal the origin to COVID-19, according to CNN.I have always thought that the virus came from the Level Four Laboratory in Wuhan.
“the simplest explanation is usually the best one.”As it’s a “spy agency” we’ll probably never know where they got the genetic database, if they’re not merely bluffing. All we’ll have is the story they wish to tell and whatever snippets they release – chosen to support whatever political objectives have been decided behind the scenes.
Most likely they just secretly bought a copy from Peter Daszak of New York Ecohealth Alliance, who commissioned and funded the research at WIV and therefore hold the ownership rights to it.
Secrecy kills. Transparency now!
Clark, I am not sure how many Level Four Laboratories there are in the World, I thought I heard China is opening a second?
Is the main purpose in most of them, to mess about chopping up dangerous virus.
Is there anything useful, other than war or threat of war, that these places do?This was a civilian programme. The claim was that by trying animal viruses in humanised mice they could predict which ones were likely to spill over to humans, and prepare, with treatments and vaccines. The motivations were the original SARS, MERS, Ebola etc.
Backfired a bit, I’d say.
There are quite a lot of these BSL4 labs all over the world. But part of the problem at WIV was that some of the work was being done at just BSL Level 2.
You can order the humanised mice over the internet. You can have bits of DNA synthesized by providing the genetic sequence, and the company will post them to you; transfer them to your own cell cultures at home. There’s a whole hobbyist amateur genetics community working in their own kitchens. I kid you not.
[ Transferred from the Westminster thread by the mods. ]
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I don’t think you could make this stuff up.Marburg Black Hemorrhagic Fever
1967 Marburg virus outbreak in West Germany was an outbreak of Marburg hemorrhagic fever initial among laboratory workers who were exposed to imported African green monkeys or their tissues while conducting research. A total of 32 people (laboratory workers and their contacts) became sick.
Yet it is in Marburg that BIONTECH has its laboratory.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-58186032
