[tim333]

True he's not a virologist but being chairman of the Covid-19 Commission probably gives him some qualification to talk about the goings on, if more on the political side. Here's his take on what happened there:

In 2001 the US defence department changed and put it's entire research budget through Tony Fauci's NIH. Since then it's been doing secretive bio defence work.

When covid broke out the scientists got together to write a paper about it and privately thought they couldn't see how it happened naturally and it was "so frigging likely it came from the lab" (Andersen). But they they met with Fauci, put out the Proximal Origins paper in Nature saying it was natural, after which Andersen got an $8m grant from Fauci.

There was also a letter in the Lancet saying "We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin".

Qualified virologist of the kind you mention are almost entirely funded from government or similar sources and letters like that pretty much say that if you say if came from the lab you are a conspiracy theorist and lose your grant and job.

Science is supposed to be about the truth about nature found through experiment, not via politics. The whole thing is totally corrupted and Proximal Origins a fraud.

[yawpitch]

> if you say if came from the lab you are a conspiracy theorist and lose your grant and job.

And, absent actual hard physical evidence, not the slightest amount of which exists, you should be labeled a conspiracy theorist, because that is exactly what you are.

Further if your job is in direct virology / epidemiology and you’re such a theorist — which, again, pretty much does not exist, hence precisely why the actually qualified write letters trying to counter the not-actually qualified — then you absolutely should lose your grant and your job. Science is about discovering the consensus on what the truth is… the truth is SARS-CoV-2 had animal origins in the wet market where all the original cases arose, full stop.

But please, go on believing your conspiracy theory.

[coupdejarnac]

You've bought into the propaganda. China orchestrated a massive disinformation campaign to deflect responsibility. They played the race card when flights to China were stopped. This all worked masterfully on left leaning people who know a lot less than they think.

Science is about discovering consensus? Wtf is this garbage.

I'm an avid China watcher, and the propaganda there started almost immediately, even before Wuhan was locked down. There were already stories being bandied about accusing the US Army of spreading a bioweapon in Wuhan etc etc.

[tim333]

Well re "hard physical evidence" the Chinese ordered all samples destroyed, and the databases were taken down or erased, so I guess if the evidence is destroyed they must be innocent, right?

I disagree about science being "discovering the consensus". It's like that Nazi book they brought out 100 scientists against Einstein. In my prefered definition of science Einstein was right and they were wrong even if the consensus there was that 'jewish science' was bad.

Not sure about "conspiracy theory" - if there's a real conspiracy and the theory is correct does it still count?

As to evidence of what actually happened, you can't get any more qualified virologist than Baric and it came out in his testimony to congress in January that he was the source of the idea to insert a furin cleavage site at the S1 S2 junction in sars like coronaviruses and was interested in the cleavage site in feline coronaviruses some of which are amino acid identical with the one in covid. (testimony 4720 on approx). There are something like 1000 natural viruses like covid and none in nature has been found with a furin cleavage site.

Assuming covid was natural and came from the market isn't it a remarkable coincidence that Baric proposed a virus with that exact never before seen modification to be done at the lab down the road? I mean of course it's natural but what are the odds of that? Man's a genius.

[yawpitch]

> […] the Chinese ordered all samples destroyed, and the databases were taken down or erased […]

If the evidence doesn’t exist then, absent evidence, you’ve got no reason to believe that evidence was destroyed.

> I disagree about science being "discovering the consensus".

Nevertheless, it moves.

> It's like that Nazi book they brought out 100 scientists against Einstein.

IIRC, those 100 scientists were not actually qualified to speak on Einstein’s work. Listening to them on Einstein is precisely the same thing you’ve been doing with your sources.

> if there's a real conspiracy and the theory is correct does it still count?

You’re assuming the “if” and the “and” before the fact again.

> As to evidence of what actually happened […] fhere are something like 1000 natural viruses like covid and none in nature has been found with a furin cleavage site.

So, here’s how you do evidence:

“86 diversified furin cleavage sites […] have been detected in 24 animal hosts in 28 countries since 1954. Besides MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2, two of five other CoVs known to infect humans (HCoV-OC43 and HCoV-HKU1) also have furin cleavage sites. In addition, human enteric coronavirus (HECV-4408) has a furin cleavage site and has been detected in humans (first in Germany in 1988)”

Liu X, Wu Q, Zhang Z. Global Diversification and Distribution of Coronaviruses With Furin Cleavage Sites. Front Microbiol. 2021;12:649314. Published 2021 Oct 7. doi:10.3389/fmicb.2021.649314

“Furin cleavage sites occurred independently for multiple times in the evolution of the coronavirus family”

Wu Y, Zhao S. Furin cleavage sites naturally occur in coronaviruses. Stem Cell Res. Published online December 9, 2020. doi:10.1016/j.scr.2020.102115

But, please, and again — and now despite direct contradiction of your own ”evidence” — continue to conspiracy theorize.

[tim333]

By like covid I meant sarbecoviruses. I guess we are just going to differ on this stuff.

[yawpitch]

Given that furin cleavage sites have been found naturally occurring on other, earlier in the phylogenetic tree of coronaviruses, viruses than SARS-CoV2, the natural assumption is that such a site is not only possible to develop, but likely to develop, in wild sarbecoviruses. Shifting the goalposts in no way whatsoever implies or allows the idea that this furin cleavage site tack of yours is evidence of anything but natural selection.

[tim333]

But it's about probabilities and timing. No sites seen naturally. Then in 2018 or so there is a proposal from a guy who works with the WIV:

>We were interested in it because most other coronaviruses in family had those sites. Why didn't sarbecovirus? So the way the grant was designed... ... The third thing was we would probably build virulent viruses and study pathogenesis...

And lo the next year (approx) a virus just like that pops up by the WIV. Bit of a coincidence?

Same guy by the way who after the breakout when Daszak said BSL 2 research at the WIV was ok emailed back

>...don't insult my intelligence by trying to feed me this load of BS

Which doesn't seem to show great confidence is the goings on there.