Any fringe belief held by a person in power has the potential to influence public policy, but in any case, none of that is relevant to the point I made.
I agree, and my OP addressed one possibility that I read about, and actually still believe may be quite possible.
I’ve never said it was a bio engineered weapon.
But it’s kinda pointless to take a blood oath in this thread if people put words in my mouth and then run to the PIT to indulge in cyber bullying.
It’s a fact that China destroyed evidence and then punished countries like Australia for demanding transparency. they also punished their own medical personnel who spoke out.
It’s a fact there is no smoking gun as to what started it. There is no animal from the wet market or lab to show this and there never will be. The best science can do is construct a probability it wasn’t manipulated using previously known samples. It could have been pangolins, bats, raccoon dogs… Nobody knows.
That’s a long way to go to say, “yes, of course I agree!” if that’s what you meant to convey. Otherwise, I’m not really sure what you’re saying. Are you saying it’s possibly bioengineered, likely bioengineered, almost surely not bioengineered?
What part of “I’ve never said it was a bioengineered weapon” is confusing you? Seriously? If I never said it was a bioengineered weapon then it stands to reason that’s not my position.
The thread is about it’s possible escape from the lab in Wuhan that studied the virus. What is relevant is China’s role in this. They destroyed evidence and punished other nations for merely calling for an investigation. They also punished their own people for speaking out.
No, we can’t quite agree, as long as there’s an active thread participant claiming there’s no evidence of viral spillover from a natural source, and that the issue remains unsettled “by design”.
Who is saying there is “no evidence” of viral spillover from a natural source?
3/18 in this thread.
And lacking the evidence destroyed by the Chinese we’re left with opinion and theory.
It doesn’t mean the theories are wrong or the science behind them is bad. It means the evidence was destroyed. Deliberately.
Really, how difficult is this grasp unless you’re trying to say it couldn’t have escaped from the lab because it was a natural sample.
Might as well lock the thread then. This hijack that you insist on belaboring has completely overtaken this discussion. It’s been over a 100 posts since we actually discussed the topic the thread is about.
I’m not sure where you’re getting a hijack that I supposedly “insist upon”.
I and others have been discussing “lab leak” theories and alternatives. Some posters have been using terms like “suspicious” and “by design”, so it’s not surprising that it’s been mentioned that “lab leak” theories and conspiracies based on bad evidence/unsupported claims have been seized on by various bad actors.
As a result we have a “hijack” where certain posters complain about how unfair it is that they’re allegedly being linked with such people, and others respond.
It seems pretty much impossible to avoid such subjects in a thread about how SARS-CoV-2 emerged. Maybe a separate thread strictly dealing with the science is in order if someone wishes to start it (though I think that’s been covered in multiple threads already).
Is there anything left to discuss? The evidence points to natural origin. Most of the remaining evidence points to infection at the wet markets, but the infection may have started at the lab where people were studying coronaviruses in animals that are found in the area, including the wet markets.
China has suppressed and destroyed lots of evidence. There may never be a definitive answer, because a natural infection that took place due to poor safety procedures in the lab would look a lot like a natural infection that took place due to poor hygiene in the wet markets.
Other than people who have a keen interest in lab safety rules and wet markets cleanliness, what difference does it make?
I endorse every word @RitterSport wrote. I’m annoyed that China destroyed the relevant evidence, but at this point, i don’t think it matters very much.
While certainly not dispositive, the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic just issued its final report that concludes that the “SARS-CoV-2, the Virus that Causes COVID-19, Likely Emerged Because of a Laboratory or Research Related Accident”. https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/12.04.2024-SSCP-FINAL-REPORT.pdf
More interesting is the implication that this was not an accidental release of a natural virus found in the wild, but was a genetically modified virus, based on a consideration of the biological characteristics of the virus. Specifically, the Committee seemed to place great importance on the presence of a furin cleavage site in SARS2, which has never been found in any other members of the virus family to which it belongs, and thus could not have been gained through the ordinary evolutionary swaps of genetic material within a virus family.
The report further notes that, in 2018, a year before the outbreak, EcoHealth, in partnership with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, in a grant application to DARPA proposed to create a virus with the same exact biological features as SARS-CoV-2’s. That is, in their application to DARPA, EcoHealth and its WIV partners stated their intent to create a SARS-like virus with a furin cleavage site, which is the exact same feature that made humans susceptible to COVID-19 infection. The panel thus commented “It is, therefore, more than just a coincidence that COVID-19 emerged from the city with a lab preparing to conduct this research.”
The report goes on to discuss many other aspects of the virus and the US response, but I thought it interesting that it reached the conclusion it did on the virus origin. I’m not an infectious disease doctor, nor even particularly well-versed in the concepts. I was hoping others with more knowledge can provide context and assessment of whether the Committee’s conclusion makes sense.
I’m not reading the entire 557 pages, but the parts that I did read appeared to be the same tired conspiracy crap we covered in this thread back in 2021. I will say that the “conclusion” stating “SARS-CoV-2, the Virus that Causes COVID-19, Likely Emerged Because of a Laboratory or Research Related Accident” doesn’t seem particularly well supported in the subsequent sections that I could see.
Would you care to point out anything that you find compelling and/or new that we should discuss?
Edit: While this thread has been dormant for a few months, I just got my latest booster, so I opened the forum for the first time in a while out of curiosity.