The Wuhan virus—how are we doing? - Page 107 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

Wandering the information superhighway, he came upon the last refuge of civilization, PoFo, the only forum on the internet ...

Provision of the two UN HDI indicators other than GNP.
Forum rules: No one line posts please.
#15177721
Drlee wrote:And, yet again, what would we "do" if it was a lab leak? Nukes? Trade war? Say cross words?


We call AMERICA'S SHERIFF, super patriot Joe Arpaio, to evict the cheating liar Biden from the White House and put Trump back in office with vice-president My Pillow Mike. Then we sit back and wait as all the people we have alienated with our racism and conspiracy theories call us to apologize and tell us how smart and right we were as we watch Biden and Harris burned at the stake in a live broadcast of their execution, with the kindling for the fire being the Chinese bamboo ballots they used to steal the election.

But for real: the answer is that conservative ideology is intellectually dead and unable to govern in a way that provides material benefit to anyone but the most wealthy. Like Ayn Rand's objectivism, it only operates in a fictional world created specifically for it. Therefore, in order to be a conservative and still support Trump after bungling the pandemic, Trump's presidency must be rewritten from bumbling New York real estate sleazebag to persecuted hero brought down by traitors and the inscrutable Chinese super virus (which isn't actually dangerous and the vaccine will make you autistic).
#15177723
We call AMERICA'S SHERIFF, super patriot Joe Arpaio to evict the cheating liar Biden from the White House and put Trump back in office with vice-president My Pillow Mike. Then we sit back and wait as all the people we have alienated with our racism and conspiracy theories call us to apologize and tell us how smart and right we were.


That's right. And with Rudy and Attorney General we will not have to worry about this shit ever again.
#15177733
Pants-of-dog wrote:Please quote the part of the study that shows why it is less likely. Thank you.

Are you claiming that the authors of the study lied in their introduction? If so, seeing how it seems self-evident that only one mutation making a virus more dangerous for humans is more likely than two simultaneous mutations making a virus more dangerous to humans, please demonstrate how having two simultaneous mutations is just as likely as just one of the two mutations.

PhantomStranger wrote:The notion the virus leaked from a lab has been debunked.

If it has been debunked, than why did Dr. Fauci recently acknowledge that the virus may not have a natural origin, and his emails show has known that he's known that for over a year?

Here's the latest numbers. Whatever else, the good news is that deaths per million continue to drop in both the US and the EU. And in the US, at least, 87.3% of those => 65 have been fully vaccinated, along with 65% of those => 18. The second undoubtedly has a great deal to be with the first, showing how close we're getting to her immunity--if we aren't already effectively there, counting those don't really need to be vaccinated because they caught the virus and recovered if they got sick at all.

Image

Image
#15177779
Doug64 wrote:Are you claiming that the authors of the study lied in their introduction? If so, seeing how it seems self-evident that only one mutation making a virus more dangerous for humans is more likely than two simultaneous mutations making a virus more dangerous to humans, please demonstrate how having two simultaneous mutations is just as likely as just one of the two mutations.


Since you are bot supporting this argument with evidence, I am not going to other with it anymore.

If it has been debunked, than why did Dr. Fauci recently acknowledge that the virus may not have a natural origin,


Please quote his exact words.

and his emails show has known that he's known that for over a year?


Please quote the relevant text. Thank you.
#15177894
Pants-of-dog wrote:Since you are bot supporting this argument with evidence, I am not going to other with it anymore.

You need evidence to demonstrate that 2 + 2 = 4?

As for the rest, how have you not seen any of the news about how suddenly they (and he) changed their tune and are now taking the lab leak hypothesis seriously? And you apparently didn’t bother to check out the link I provided.
#15177898
You see Doug, when POD is presented with inconvenient truth his debating tactic is to ask for his opponent to do his thinking for him. I refuse to do this.
#15177926
Doug64 wrote:You need evidence to demonstrate that 2 + 2 = 4?


No, you have misunderstood.

Please provide evidence for the claim that the mutations seen in the coronavirus are more likely to be artificially created than naturally occurring. Specifically, I would like you to find the section of the study you cited (i.e. the study that made that particular claim) and quote the text from that study that corroborates that particular argument.

As for the rest, how have you not seen any of the news about how suddenly they (and he) changed their tune and are now taking the lab leak hypothesis seriously? And you apparently didn’t bother to check out the link I provided.


Please quote the relevant text where Dr. Fauci’s exact words are written. Thank you.

By quoting this text, everyone involved in this thread has an equal opportunity to look at the evidence themselves. As someone who advocates for dispassionate presentation of the actual data, you will undoubtedly appreciate why this is important.

————————

Drlee wrote:You see Doug, when POD is presented with inconvenient truth his debating tactic is to ask for his opponent to do his thinking for him. I refuse to do this.


Actually, I am asking Doug64 to do his thinking for himself.

The idea that I should read his argument, then read his source to find the evidence, then copy and paste said evidence, then show how it supports his claim, and then address the evidence and claim is not a good idea.

It is much better if he reads his source to find the evidence, then he copies and pastes said evidence, and then he shows how it supports his claim. Then, I would do my bit and then address the evidence and claim.

There are two important reasons.

1. I am not your maid or servant.

2. Whenever I do this for other people, there invariable response is “that is not what I said”, and then we start a two page discussion where I am supposed to guess the argument. This is a waste of everyone’s time. I have no trouble admitting that I attacked a strawman if I did, but it helps no one to force me to build one.

So, feel free to continue to think whatever unpleasant things you believe about me, but I am confident that no one will dispute these two points. Thank you.
#15178016
Here is a summary of the specific arguments against the virus having leaked from a lab:

Arguments against Conspiracy theory #1: Covid 19 being Chinese bioweapon

1-the virus's receptor binding domain, which makes it an efficient human pathogen, is also found in coronaviruses in pangolins, scaly anteaters proposed as an intermediary host between bats and humans so its known it happens in nature and not just from tissue culture;

2- according to Angela Rasmussen, PhD, an Associate Research Scientist in the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University in New York City, computer modeling has shown that the receptor-binding domain of the spike protein in SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is "suboptimal" which means that someone designing an optimal receptor-binding domain sequence probably would not have engineered a suboptimal receptor binding domain of the spike protein in Covid 19 but an optimal one that with the sequence that evolved in SARS-CoV-2;

3-there are no genetic similarities with other virus backbones used in any of the known reverse genetics systems for betacoronaviruses which agaiun suggests that Covid 19 was not engineered;

4- COVID-19 has what is called a "furin cleavage site", which while it would allow the virus to infect human cells would actually diminish it in tissue cultures, so if it could infect people would do so inefficiently;

5-why anyone would go through the work of creating a new virus when they could simply take an existing virulent pathogen like the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) or MERS (Middle East respiratory syndrome) coronaviruses and make them even worse- that would be fire easier that trying to create a completeley new virus with no guarantees it will do what it is supposed to do, i.e., kill millions of people;

Arguments Against Conspiray No. 2 That COVID 19 Was Made In A Lab

1-scientists in what is called "gain-of-function research, have studied bat coronaviruses by capturing bats in caves then isolating and growing these viruses in tissue cultur to see if they can infect human cells- it is in these studies scientists try to improve a pathogen's ability to cause disease so that the researchers can characterize its interactions with humans and allowing evaluation of its potential to cause a pandemic and informing public health, preparedness, and development of potential therapeutics and vaccines and with that in mind:
Shi Zhengli, PhD,the Director of the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases at the Wuhan Institute of Virology published in public domain the genetic sequences of isolates from the bat coronaviruses she studied-there was no secret as to what she was studying AND most importantly none of the genetic sequences she found matched those of COVID-19 whichShi hconfirmed in a recent interview in Scientific American- so if she would have published a sequence for the virus and then this virus came out, it would would have been known to come from her lab BUT there no evidence for that BUT there is plenty of evidence against it because;

2- Shi's work on bat coronaviruses has showed that these viruses already existed in nature including some with characteristics allowing them to be transmissible to humans;

3-in an accidental or deliberate leak there would have been a high level of biocontainment at Shi's lab but there is no evidnece for that and if anything her lab had stringent biosafety protocols including airflow systems, sealed containers, positive-pressure personal protective equipment (PPE), extensive training, and highly controlled access to the building;

4-Shi is a highly reputable scientist always open about her work across the world;

5- in regards to researcher becoming unknowingly infected with the coronavirus while wearing full PPE is improbable;

6- humans however without PPE live amongst animals carrying viruses—and in particuylarbats, and other intermediate hosts-particularily handling bat meat or other kinds of meat not properly temperature controlled, full of blood, left out in the sun, covered with flies, dust, people's mucus from breathing walking by, exposure to excrement and urine from people's hands...wet markets are a petry dish for creating conditions for not just viruses, but different types of bateria and fungii;

7-viruses with actual pandemic potential are rare otherwise we'd all be dead by now;

8-so given 1-7 the most plausible scenario becomes a "natural zoonotic spillover," and adding to that theory is that existing serology studies have shown that certainpeople in China living near bat caves developed antibodies against bat SARS-like coronaviruses in their blood which in turn stronly suggests that certain peopleexposed to related viruses in the course of their daily lives, came into contact with SARS-CoV-2, from being exposed to a wild bat or some other animal.

source for above:

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspec ... 9-came-lab
#15178019
Here is another article that explains in detail about why its unlikely the virus came from a lab but none-the-less it needs to be ruled out.

https://www.vox.com/22453571/lab-leak-c ... logy-china

As the above article says it is possible a researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology was exposed to a bat coronavirus while collecting samples in the field and inadvertently brought the infection back to Wuhan.

Its also possible scientists at the lab could have been exposed to a sample of SARS-CoV-2 that was under study and then spread the virus to others.

The article points out thagt on 2004, a researcher contracted SARS after a stint working at the Chinese National Institute of Virology in Beijing and went on to infect her mother and a nurse at the hospital who went on to infect others, leading to 1,000 placed under quarantine or medical supervision.

As the other article I provided and this one also shows, its improbable the virus leaked from the lab but it still is important to rule it out for obvious reasons.

The scientist. Shi Zhengli at the Wuhan Institute of Virology told Scientific American working on the viruses instructed her team to sequence the genomes of all the viruses they were studying in their laboratory and compare them to sequences obtained from Covid-19 patients to see if it could have leaked from her lab but none matched.

This part of the article I would state makes it most probable the Covid 19 virus was not lab made or leaked:

1-we learned from the 2003 SARS virus outbreak that a coronavirus could jump from bats to an intermediary species (in the case of SARS a civet cat) to humans'

2-since SARS and what we learned scientists warneda similar scenario could easily occur again and we should prepare for it but we did NOT;

3-there are a number of viruses like SARS-CoV-2 in bats, not just in China but also in Thailand, Cambodia, and Japan and these viruses are not direct ancestors of SARS-CoV-2, but are closely related and with that in mind and in reference, we also know viruses mutate all the time, and the more widespread they are, the more changes can occur, and so seeing a related virus over such a wide area shows there was and remains ample opportunity for it and other viruses to mutate and continue to spread before theiur final jump into humans.

Some of us want to claim its man made because then its known, its measurable and its no longer random. It has a beginning and end and is preventable.

The alternative is that we humans are NOT in control of viruses bit arrogantly believe we can handle and eat and meat without proper hygiene considerations. That theory which is we are dirty idiots flouting basic hygiene standards doesn't fill political forums let alone get people elected.
#15179145
Drlee wrote:You see Doug, when POD is presented with inconvenient truth his debating tactic is to ask for his opponent to do his thinking for him. I refuse to do this.

Yes, I've noticed that. It's why I usually don't bother.

More than a little late this week, the family reunion last week was wonderful but having Mother Nature do her best to wash us out and then a car battery deciding it was done on a Saturday evening four hours from home made it just a little stressful. And my Civil War thread is taking a larger than usual amount of time currently. Any road, here's the latest numbers. For those that have dropped in since the last time I mentioned it, the numbers for vaccinations distributed and administered are per 100,000. And as of today, per the CDC, 78% of those in the US =>65 and 57.4% of those => 18 have been fully vaccinated.

Image

Image
#15179545
Even Doug has admitted his best arguments are circumstantial evidence not direct evidence.

Doug asked me how has the Wuhan lab leak been debunked?

Here in a summary is a fallacy of the conspiracty arguments and why they have been debunked:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswith ... 4f2083dd8c


"In September of 2020, Dr. Li-Meng Yan published a pre-print of a report claiming that SARS-CoV-2 was created in a Chinese Lab as part of bioweapon research. That paper was debunked by numerous researchers, and multiple reviewers at MIT’s Rapid Reviews of COVID-19 concluded that the claims were misleading, unethical, and “baseless and are not supported by the data and methods used.”

It goes on to state:

"If you want to know whether a laboratory origin for SARS-CoV-2 is reasonable, the two things to look at are the genome of the disease and the ecological modeling of how that disease should behave in the wild. From the virus’s genome, we can robustly conclude that the mechanisms proposed for how this virus would have arisen in a lab are all wildly insufficient to explain its properties. From the case records of COVID-19 and the behavior of the disease, it’s likely that the first cases in Hubei province occurred as early as October of 2019, meaning that the alleged infections among Wuhan Institute of Virology workers could not explain the origin of the very first cases."

It also stated:

"But what she (Dr. Shi) did next was what you’d want any good researcher to do: she went through her lab’s records to check the genetic sequences from all of the viruses in her lab. The results? None of them matched SARS-CoV-2. In fact, the closest match — at 96% — was a coronavirus that was identified in a population of horseshoe bat in Yunnan: three provinces away from Hubei, where Wuhan is located. This is not novel information, either; it was published in Nature back in early February, 2020."

Then it goes on to summarize the inherent weaknesses in the lab leak theory showing wat kind of a reach you have to go through to conclude it was a leak:

"The virological evidence supporting a laboratory origin of SARS-CoV-2, on the other hand, is enormously flimsy. The idea that we can insert novel genetic sequences into a virus is true, but what happens next isn’t generally appreciated. In particular:

you may or may not get a successful protein,
even if you do get a successful protein, it may not work well in the context of the complete viral organism, as viruses are highly complex, evolved organisms, not a simple toy that can be manipulated like Lego bricks,
it may or may not replicate successfully in the target cells of interest,
where even viruses that are successful at infecting target cells in tissue cultures may not be successful in the context of a host with a complex, fully functional immune system,
even if you do get one that’s well-enough adapted to its new host, its transmissibility may be altered, rendering an easily-spread virus unlikely,
and even if it’s a successful virus, it’s uncertain that it would pose a lethal threat to the host species.
None of these criteria even consider the variation in the genetics of the host, the immunity of potential hosts, and the probabilities associated with infection among hosts. In summary, if SARS-CoV-2 was created in a lab — which the evidence does not favor — this virus somehow won the generic lottery on multiple, complex fronts, each one of which is an active research area in virology to this day. Furthermore, if this virus did originate from a leak from the Wuhan Institute for Virology, it either leaked out prior to the very first cases, which is a problem for the timeline of cases, or it was already circulating in humans prior to its release. Either way, however, there would have to be an enormous conspiracy. Dr. Shi must have been lying; other people in her group and at the Wuhan Institute for Virology must have been lying; people at EcoHealth Alliance must have been lying; affiliated researchers such as Peter Daszek must be lying; and Dr. Fauci must be lying as well."
#15179549
No one advancing lab leak theories has proven the virus can be made in a lab.

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspec ... 9-came-lab

https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opin ... ence-67229


Evidence debunks the virus could be made in a lab:

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/cor ... sis-nature

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/virologis ... d=71097846

https://allianceforscience.cornell.edu/ ... es-to-die/

To believe the virus was leaked from a lab necessarily suggests 27 scientists from 9 countries are all in on the cover up because they debunk the lab leak claim:

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/02 ... oronavirus
#15179665
The problem with studying death rates in both Covid 19 patients and Delta virus variation of Covid 19 patients who are unvaccinated and vaccinated is on-going and so patterns emerging that may help explain certain questions as to how useful the vaccine is, remain to be seen.


There is a lot of grey areas and gaps and no one is lying. Its the nature of the issue.

As we speak Delta variant is prevalent in the UK and they are studying it.
#15179668
Saying the Chinese "intentionally created the virus to unseat Trump or destabilize America" is a massive overestimation of Chinese (or CCP) competency.

Although the destabilization of the free world is certainly a welcomed outcome to these dreadful power abusers.
For example, they probably cannot roll out the National Security Law in Hong Kong so smoothly if there's no virus to halt the protests before they do.
#15179911
PhantomStranger wrote:Even Doug has admitted his best arguments are circumstantial evidence not direct evidence.

Any evidence one way or the other is at best circumstantial because the CCP has done everything in its power to prevent a thorough, accurate, neutral investigation of the origins of the Wuhan virus. Which itself is a strong piece of circumstantial evidence for the lab leak hypothesis--when a totalitarian government works that hard at hiding the truth, it's fairly safe to assume that's because the truth hurts them very, very badly.

I hope everyone in the US had a safe and fun celebration of the freedoms we enjoy and how far we have come since the signing of the Declaration of Independence (a document whose timeless ideals are still a direct threat to the CCP, as they are to all tyrants). I missed the Saturday update for the inoculations, but at least here's the numbers for the death rates. The good news is that in both the US and Europe, the overall rate continues to drop.

Image

Edit: Forgot to include, here's a study on the impact of the epidemic and government policies responding to it on excess mortality: THE IMPACT OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC AND POLICY RESPONSES ON EXCESS MORTALITY
For the abstract:

As a way of slowing COVID-19 transmission, many countries and U.S. states implemented shelter-in-place(SIP) policies. However, the effects of SIP policies on public health are a priori ambiguous as they might have unintended adverse effects on health. The effect of SIP policies on COVID-19 transmission and physical mobility is mixed. To understand the net effects of SIP policies, we measure the change in excess deaths following the implementation of SIP policies in 43 countries and all U.S. states. We use an event study framework to quantify changes in the number of excess deaths after the implementation of a SIP policy. We find that following the implementation of SIP policies, excess mortality increases.The increase in excess mortality is statistically significant in the immediate weeks following SIP implementation for the international comparison only and occurs despite the fact that there was a decline in the number of excess deaths prior to the implementation of the policy. At the U.S. state-level, excess mortality increases in the immediate weeks following SIP introduction and then trends below zero following 20 weeks of SIP implementation. We failed to find that countries or U.S. states that implemented SIP policies earlier, and in which SIP policies had longer to operate, had lower excess deaths than countries/U.S.states that were slower to implement SIP policies. We also failed to observe differences in excess death trends before and after the implementation of SIP policies based on pre-SIP COVID-19 death rates.
#15179966
Reference your working paper. This has been done to death. The author offers a hypothetical in answer to strong and settled evidence. And he ignores the moral hazard in making a decision to certainly accept more deaths.

The fact is that government statistics show no statistically significant rise in deaths by other causes which might be related to quarantine laws. Indeed many deaths by causes other than Covid have been eliminated by the same quarantine. For example, influenza and accident.

The lock downs are a net saver of lives on a grand scale.
#15179977
In my neck of the woods, we saw a pattern:

Deaths go down, restrictions are eased.

Restrictions are eased, infections go up.

Infections go up, and lockdowns happen and then right after increased deaths from the increased infections.

This explains why deaths go down before lockdowns and go up again after.

Please note that lockdowns are not the cause of increased death.
#15180000
The vaccination is to slow. Worst case scenario the virus mutates to a kind of Ebola. Commonly a virus wants to spread and dead people do not spread it, but random mutations with at least 6 billion unvaccinated people could lead to apocalypse if it mutates.
  • 1
  • 105
  • 106
  • 107
  • 108
  • 109
  • 207
Israel-Palestinian War 2023

The Settlement program is an example of slow ethn[…]

Russia-Ukraine War 2022

Meanwhile, your opponents argue that everyone e[…]

People tend to forget that the French now have a s[…]

Neither is an option too. Neither have your inte[…]