220
China lab suspected of Covid leak stripped of US funding for violating biosafety rules
(www.telegraph.co.uk)
this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2023
220 points (86.4% liked)
World News
36932 readers
796 users here now
News from around the world!
Rules:
-
Please only post links to actual news sources, no tabloid sites, etc
-
No NSFW content
-
No hate speech, bigotry, propaganda, etc
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
This is stupid. There is just as much evidence it came from Fort Detrick.
For the record I don't think it came from either.
I don't know why anyone is still talking about a lab outbreak in Wuhan because of the wet market nearby being suspected in mid December, when we know for sure that Covid was in Italy in September/October and possibly as early as May. The world just shrugged at this info because faecal treatment samples aren't as interesting as as bat soup and bioterrorism.
Racism mostly. Easier to just be racist against the Chinese than to admit COVID is the result of something more nuanced and systemic
It's also about laziness. It's much less effort to just point a finger than to think about the complexities of a situation.
It's also really easy to dismiss the uncomfortable origin (It came from a Chinese lab) and point to the "complexities of the situation" instead.
Nobody has a problem with Chinese people.
But the CCP needs to be given the Beria treatment.
https://www.yahoo.com/video/tucker-carlson-guest-military-doesnt-193556601.html
Yeah, and hitler didn't like jews.
It's tucker fucking Carlson, duh.
Ask him about gay people and immigrants next.
The clip is actually mainly about his guest, but anyway my point is that your claim was clearly false.
“We don’t hate the Chinese just the government that they like and has made their people prosperous.”
Check what happened to the Russians after the Soviet Union fell and tell me it’s not hate to wish that on the Chinese next.
The USSR (Stalin mostly) broke the Russian people, which is why they're so weak after its fall.
The CCP broke the Chinese people too. Seems like a common theme.
What does it mean to "break" a people?
The Chinese people were certainly already "broken" in 1949. They had undergone a century of collapse, most were illiterate, women were essentially chattel, and every single grain of wheat or rice more than what was required to keep them alive was stolen by unelected landlords.
The communists took power and every single one of them was taught to read, women were enfranchised, no-fault divorce and abortion were legalized, political rights were expanded, opium and gangs were chased out of the mainland and the feudal lords were held to account.
30 years after the revolution they had turned a society of feudal peasants into a nuclear power, 30 years after that and it's the world's largest economy by PPP.
The same things can be said about the Bolsheviks, who defeated a nazi army which sought to annihilate them.
"I'm not racist, nobody has a problem with Chinese people."
"Also, the Chinese are wild animals that were broken and domesticated."
Okay there, buckaroo. Keep telling yourself that.
Hahaha what the fuck
who broke you?
I'm not racist, but here's my thoughts generalizing entire populations of millions as "weak people" because of their Asiatic brainpans.
And by every major polling organizations metrics the Chinese people overwhelmingly approve of the CPC.
Typical westoid wants to destroy a government that is liked by it's people. What's your countries government approval rating? Do you want to overthrow your government too?
I worked there for a good while.
They don't hate it, they treat it like the weather, something to fear, but nothing you can do anything about.
The CCP broke them completely, much like the USSR broke the Russian people.
Tell us of the deep abiding wisdom you gained from teaching English at a barely-regulated "school" for 12 months.
Any sources on the virus being discovered in Italy before China? That would change the entire discussion.
https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-italy-timing-idUSKBN27W1J2
There’s no similar tests done in China (that I can find traces of) so we have no idea when the virus started circulating in China. Just like Winnie the Poo likes it.
"signaling that it might have spread beyond China earlier than thought."
they still suggest Chinese origin
Yup, this idea only works if you believe what the CCP says verbatim.
Well, no, it's not an "idea". It just means there's nothing special about Wuhan that should make us look at everything there as a suspect.
You are wrong, the assumption of people who post this is that there wasn't COVID-19 in China before the CCP announced it was around.
You're the one making assumptions I'm afraid.
We don't know where Covid-19 came from. That is the outcome. It quite well could have come from China. We have no idea. What we do know is that it didn't spread globally from a wet market in Wuhan that happens to be near a virology research centre. Because that idea hangs entirely on it appearing there first in December.
Covid-19 could have started in China. Or Italy. Or anywhere. We don't know, and as a species we seem to be very reluctant to find out - we've just accepted bat soup or bioterrorism and just moved on. Meaning that we've learned absolutely nothing to prevent it happening again.
From the genetics of the virus we can tell it originally came from either Pangolins or species of bats which are local to Asia only, which is why the wet market hypothesis is so popular in the first place because the virus is 99% similar to that of one found in Chinese pangolins. The 1% genetic difference could come from a lab on accident, but that would most likely be from the Wuhan lab and not for Detrick because the Wuhan lab was in fact experimenting with Chinese bats.
EDIT for sources:
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abh0117
Do you understand that still the leap from "It's 99% similar to Chinese pangolin coronavirus" (and hey, you're 99% similar to a Ugandan chimp) and "so the other 1% probably came from a lab in Wuhan"? Again, Wuhan is literally only linked to this story as the first place it was reported. No evidence at all places it in Wuhan first. We can say that's a Chinese cover-up, but go ahead and say that, and recognise it as speculation.
Dude I'm a microbioligst, just look at the cladisitics of all the viruses similar to SARS-COIVD-2, it's undeniable that the virus is from China because of its similarity to that of the viruses in the pangolin and, it's like saying humans don't come from Africa, just because 1% is a big deal does not mean that all the genetic evidence shows that ALL its relatives come from China, just as ALL early homo species come from Africa.
I'm absolutely 100% with you on it coming from Asian pangolins. That even quite likely ties it to Asian wet markets, or the illegal hunting trade. SARS and MERS were both zoonotic too. SARS came from the abuse of palm civets.
What you seem to not understand - and here's where I get to dick-swing my tangentially related credentials - is that 'wet markets' are everywhere in China and indeed Asia. There's a dozen in Wuhan alone. 'Fresh market' would be a much better name - it's the opposite to a dry market, ie shelf-life goods and non-perishables. Google just calls them "Farmer's Markets", which is what they would be called in the US.
Fresh markets also happen to be places that people travel distance to get to - traders bringing produce, and people traveling to get stuff. Pangolins from as far away as India and Indonesia end up in China. The trade of exotic animals and especially ones with Chinese 'medicine' applications is horrendous in tropical Asia, where I spent a number of years, visiting China only once. It has a lot to do with why I turned veggie!
So again, there are thousands if not hundreds of thousands of 'wet markets' in Asia. The only distinction that one of Wuhan's has is that it was reported there first, at least three months after the virus had already spread - maybe from China - as far as Italy. It makes it absurd to tie things up nice and simply as "oh, and there's a virology lab in that city of 11 million people. Must have been a leak". We have no idea.
I'm in Ireland. My grandmother died of a sudden and rapid onset of pneumonia in December 2019 that did not respond to ordinary treatment. My son was sick with something like a flu that give him the sniffles and sapped all energy from him for 2 days, which sticks only in mind because keeping him home resulted in a fight with the in-laws which means they haven't seen him since. Could either of those things have been Covid? Again, no idea. Nobody sent anyone for strain testing, and Ireland, like most places, does not habitually keep waste treatment plant samples for later testing. Nobody has suggested an absurd cover-up by the Irish government of course. And the stories of a "bad flu" in autumn and winter of 2019 are everywhere.
UK flu season 'starting early': https://www.england.nhs.uk/2019/12/public-urged-to-act-fast-to-avoid-festive-flu/
Europe in general complaining about flu symptoms and dry coughs in Winter 2019, analysed statistically: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-81333-1
USA, higher cases than usual in South: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/06/us-flu-season-arrives-early-driven-by-an-unexpected-virus.html
And, for all that's useful about it, at least anecdotally from non-Chinese sources in Wuhan, the particular wet market didn't even have pangolins or bats.
https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/science-blog/wet-market-sources-covid-19-bats-and-pangolins-hokave-alibi
Everything you posted is circumstantial and CVOID is not like the flu in presentation. In fact to compare COVID to flu is conpiratorial in nature so I'm cutting it off with you here.
"It makes it absurd to tie things up nice and simply as “oh, and there’s a virology lab in that city of 11 million people. Must have been a leak”. We have no idea."
I did not say for sure it came from a lab, I am saying that if it did it probably came from the one in Wuhan, and you even aknowledge that I said the most likely case is pangolins in China, I'm going to just cut it off with you now because unfortunately you contradict yourself way to much and you're basically stuck in circular logic that it can't have come from china because you don't want it to have come from China.
You admit the first report comes from Wuhan, and all the genetic evidence points to it having come from an animal that had to be from asia at the very least, but then do another 180 and say well maybe it was from another place in asia, even though the first reports are from china, then you say I for sure said it was from a lab while I did not say that.
But for the last thing I say let me show you what COVID relatives we are talking about here, in order of how related they are to covid:
-RPYN06- first sequenced in China's Yunnan provience
-RMYN02 - Also Yunnan province
-PrC31- also Yunan province
These are the closest relatives of COVID, they are ALL from China's Yunnan province.
Other relatives:
RAtg13 - Also Yunnan province
RshSTT183 - Actually cambodia! only five degrees of seperation!!
RshSTT200- Cambodia too
CoVZC45- Uh oh! China again!
CoVZXC21- China again again
longquan140- China
so yeah, it's obviously from china. All of is ancestor are from China, except for the two from Cambodia and there's no contesting that.
Covid absolutely is like the flu in presentation to ordinary people. That's quite literally how the warning was communicated to the general public. Here's quite literally the first sentence from my local health authority's guidance.
https://www2.hse.ie/conditions/flu/symptoms-diagnosis/
At no point have I said it can't have come from China. I said quite the opposite. I'm saying the first report coming from Wuhan in particular and a single wet market from the thousands in China when the specific virus had already spread internationally anywhere from 3 to 6 months earlier is an absurd thing for you to insist it came from Wuhan originally, and a ridiculous thing to make you say 'most likely from the lab because they were studying bats'. Because yes, you did say it was 'most likely' from the Wuhan lab.
You're trying to paint me as a conspiracy theorist because you like your own baseless conspiracy theory?
Where did I say it most likely came from a lab, qoute me right now.
Did you, like, forget your own post? "On accident"?
Again, for the millionth time: it showing up in Wuhan in December means literally nothing to the origin of the virus if it, and I'll be very clear here and agree in principle to literally everything else you've said, if it had spread from Yunnan province (in tropical Asia) to Italy by September or indeed May.
And, because you edited in the stuff about Yunnan apparently after I'd gone to sleep: Wuhan is in Heibei province in Central China. Not Yunnan. Any pangolins in any market even if present (and scientists tracking trafficked animals from Oxford say they weren't), would have come from further south such as, yes, Yunnan. Or any of dozens of other places in tropical Asia, from where someone could also have in a single day traveled to Europe.
I simply cannot understand how an educated person would boil it down to this idea:
The virus is 99% similar to one in pangolins in Yunnan province and so if coming from a lab it must come from a lab in Wuhan, Heibei where they studied bats, and then it either spread from there in December 2019 to the people in Wuhan but also and traveled in time and space to Italy in September 2019, or spread from the lab at some undetermined time but did not affect anyone in China for 3 months, spreading instead to Italy and Spain and other places and eventually decided, like so many Chinese people, to return home for Chinese New Year back first to the exact city it came from, in Central China.
And this is how you can completely deny reality.
That’s the thing, the COVID conspiracy people now posting this shirt saying, “SEE!?! IT WAS LAB LEAK!!” as if that justifies every single other insane thing they’ve ever said about COVID. Because there’s a huge difference between “covid CAME FROM a lab” and “lab leak possible origin.” One implies conspiracy, the other implies carelessness. What’s the old saying? ‘Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to greed?’ I very much think the same applies to stupidity—and honestly, in this case, greed probably caused the stupidity. How much funding-slashing has led to calamity in recent times? Plenty.
I think the lab with a long record of carelessness leaking the virus by accident is entirely plausible if not the most reasonable explanation. The issue is not so much about how/when it was leaked, but more along the lines of how poorly they handled the whole situation and subsequent coverup. For all we know, it could have been leaked by accident way earlier.
I personally don't think it came from Detrick, but I don't fault you for thinking so
It came from the lab in Wuhan, not Detrick. We shall never really know since every govt, especially China will deny and cover up the truth.
It didn't come from a lab in Wuhan, it was first discovered in Wuhan but was already going around in Italy for months at that point based on waste samples.
The point was that we have just as much evidence to say it came from Detrick as we do to say it came from a Chinese lab. It most likely didn't come from either, but only one of these conspiracies gets pushed. If you provide any pushback that maybe China isn't responsible for COVID you get met with "well they would lie and cover it up, so I might as well be right"
Yeah, I don't really have any issues with accepting a lab leak possibility, but the lab leak people generally add a whole bunch of other conspiracies on top of that (it was designed as a bioweapon, leaked intentionally, etc), and nobody can really explain why this would be any good as a bioweapon if it hurts you as much as your enemies, and if you release it without having a vaccine for it.
I think the bio weapon part is from people who don’t understand what research is going on lab. They hear “gain of function” research and immediately think Resident Evil type bio weapon.
Not that I agree that type of research is good for us to be doing in the first place. But I do understand the reason we do that type if research is to learn about viruses and how to combat them as they mutate. I think it’s stupid to be doing that type of research anywhere, especially finding China.
“Gain of function” is an extremely broad category that is an absolutely necessary part of molecular biology research.
The original saying is "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
It came from the wild. They, along with Germany and other labs, were researching Sars related wild vectors and the possibility of natural selection causing a new outbreak.
I find it reasonable to believe a biosafety incident at the Wuhan lab infected several of the lab researchers and that led to the pandemic.
But that's the extent of where things go. Conspiracies about bioweapons are idiotic.
I thought this as well (massive safety events being a pretty normal thing, after all) until last year when the wet market swab data was finally analyzed. (After apparently being leaked? Accidentally? Accidentally on purpose?)
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abp8715
"Both early lineages of SARS-CoV-2 were geographically associated with the market"
I remembered reading early on that someone sold a carcass from the lab to a wet market. I think that's probably Western propaganda and I have no idea whether that's true.
However, in China there were posters in every restaurant saying to avoid eating such meats. They started to appear in the first half of 2020. I saw them in Shanghai, Ningbo, and Hangzhou.
Maybe the government just saw it as a useful opportunity to steer the public toward factory-produced meats that fall under the "safe umbrella" of capitalism. Either one is interesting to think about