- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
That’s just wild. The one silver lining to T2 is that I’m not shocked by anything anymore. It’s still outrageous, but the surprise is gone.
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But I thought conservatives said COVID was all made up and a plot by the democrats to control the populace through mask-wearing?
Note that mask-wearing only makes it so you can’t breathe if Democrats want you to do it for public health reasons. Mask-wearing is hunky dory if you’re doing it because you’re a Nazi who doesn’t want to be personally identified.
Oh sure this is like them claiming that nanograms of mercury in vaccines cause autism but they argue that companies dumping mercury into their local atmosphere, soil, and water are overburdened by liberal government regulations and shouldn’t be regulated.
Then in order to “cure” said autism, they pump their children with any manner of completely worthless and dangerous interventions from the same pharma companies they claim to hate.
Yeah I just listened to the newest Behind the Bastards about this and Robert Evans describes numerous examples of parents treating their kids like lab rats and pumping them full of expiramental drugs until they died. It’s awful shit all around.
Is that this week or the nightmare chelation therapy and exploding death chambers to cure ‘heavy metal toxicity’ from last week?
The child murder episodes are rather hard to handle.
Well you see, there’s a simple explanation for this. When we do it, it’s good, and when you do it, it’s bad.
We have always been at war with Eurasia
That was last week
… Is this the new age dark ages?
Yup.
I feel like I’m screaming, “help” at the top of a mountain, yet nobody can hear me. I feel like almost all online interactions are false. I feel like my day to day life is shrinking from country scale to community to household scale. This is where we are divided and we don’t care for another, but only ourselves. Not out of greed, but out of perceived necessity. It’s all fake.
I completely understand sometimes it feels like everyone has their head buried in the sand or worse is lapping up the misinformation without a second thought, living in a post truth society is truly hell for the analytical.
I’m with you. Corporations have figured out how to fully monetize the internet and information in general. Knowledge and education have been paywalled. What does filter through is manipulation and brainwashing in some form.
We’re Doomed then
For the US maybe, but right now it seems like the wider world may survive.
I moderate the bad religion community (they have a song called The New Dark Ages). Its pretty bitchin. it was written during the W Bush presidency but their material get progressively more relevant as time goes on
Such a good song. I have not thought about or listened to that song or album in at least a decade. Thanks for the reference to rekindle my fond memories. Time to go listen to some Bad Religion… :-)
They released a record called Age of Unreason during the first trump term. Its some of the strongest material of their career imo.
New Maps of Hell was pretty killer though
“We’ve got the American Jesus. He helped build the President’s estate.”
One Nation, Under God
That website is batshit. It looks like a tabloid website. It’s not just promoting the lab leak theory. It also calls out Fauci, Andrew Cuomo, and Biden. It is basically a political hit piece. Fucking embarrassing.
It would basically be like Biden changing a site about Russia to include info about Trump’s pee tape.
That website is batshit
So it is on point?
I’m just sitting here watching the end of the world
I saw a billboard outside of my city yesterday saying something like “did your loved ones really die of COVID-19?” and had some “covid is a hoax” website named on it. What a fucking dark timeline we’re in.
I overheard a guy in 2021 say to someone that his brother said, “I just came from a funeral for a friend who died from covid.” The next thing the guy said was, "I told him, no, your friend died with covid, not from covid.
It really upset me. I just tried to ignore him but it actually kinda ruined my day.
That’s fucked up. I’m sorry.
The US government really is just being vandalised.
This is a group of people who feel they’ve been unfairly made fun of for too long finally getting their revenge.
Lab leak: picture of Trump. Hm, I always suspected that’s how he came into this world. Good thing they’re officially confirming it.
You made me chuckle while reading comments and I thank you for it.
It is insane how many comments here believe that humans somehow made COVID-19 in a lab and leaked it. It is obvious and clear that the critical sequences responsible for the jump to humans exist in wild type form in nature. In fact, the critical spike protein sequence is so similar between coronavirus that the antigen work which the vaccine was based upon was done BEFORE COVID-19 in Jason McClellan’s lab at Dartmouth.
This WILL happen again, and conspiracy theories that have now shut down labs and funding are likely to cause millions of lost lives next time. We got lucky and the tinfoil hats are going to guarantee we’ll be unlucky next time.
Yeah, I used to believe that too. Until I read how irresponsible these scientists were. Before the outbreak, they were planning to release an enhanced version into bat caves filled with bats to observe how the coronavirus mutated. They were infecting bats in the lab with coronavirus. Nobody said they created this from scratch, but they could have definitely helped evolution along. Even the CIA suspects it could have been a lab leak. I think the problem is that thinking it is “man-made” is hard for many, but it’s not difficult to believe that the evolution of the virus was influenced by humans.
it’s not difficult to believe that the evolution of the virus was influenced by humans.
Only for the ignorant. This is how research has worked for decades. Even the CIA (who are not scientists) have “low confidence”. Since when does “low confidence” mean it happened or you believe it??
All sequence data, wild type virus, and previous research history clearly show this virus existed in nature and because it is a highly mutable RNA virus, was able to infect humans. No credible scientist says otherwise. Let’s be clear - if they were studying the virus in a lab and it “got out” from the lab or from the wild what difference does it make? This is NOT a man made virus and to make the leap to that is just plain ignorance.
So the ignorant human response is to shut down all research on viruses because of the fear of it being “man made”. The result? When this happens again in 3 or 100 years (which it will), we will have no R&D to lean on LIKE WE DID FOR THE COVID19 VACCINE. We’ve ALREADY discovered a number of viruses in the wild that are likely to mutate and cause another pandemic. We should be celebrating research because the previous decade of work on antigen presentation of the spike protein gave us a vaccine in 11 months that we would otherwise likely not have EVEN TODAY.
I guess this is why ancient civilizations had human sacrifice when there was an eclipse. The stupid scared ignorant people determined public policy.
Let’s be clear - if they were studying the virus in a lab and it “got out” from the lab or from the wild what difference does it make?
Firmer policies & enforcement of safety protocols? Informed selection of safety protocols?
These things already happen to an insane degree, which is good. Others are using this argument to either jump to the conclusion that it’s man made or that we should shut down all coronavirus research. There is a clear distinction between these thoughts that are being intentionally blurred by those with an agenda.
We ought to be vigilant about leaping to conclusions or letting biases creep in, and I can’t control others doing that.
Contrary to these things happening to an insane degree, it’s not clear the laboratories in question took adequate precautions.
Concerns about biosafety standards first caught my notice with this report stating that the laboratory may have been working with coronavirus at inappropriate biosafety levels as low as 2 (eg, unblocked respiratory paths of infection). Questioning the source (even though it seems coherent), I noticed other corroborating reports with references. If the reports are true, then these laboratories in the Wuhan Institute worked with infectious coronaviruses at inappropriate biosafety levels lower than their US counterparts.
Okay you’ve refused to acknowledge or read my more important points so it appears you don’t want a conversation with perseverations on your agenda. Good luck.
I don’t know what logically led you to that conclusion. Maybe you ought to self-reflect & work on your own biases/not jump to conclusions?
I’m linking to supporting references, and you’re not, so 🤷.
All sequence data, wild type virus, and previous research history clearly show this virus existed in nature
This is an exaggeration. There was a strain logged that was 96% similar (BatCoV RaTG13) but this lacked the proteins at the S1/S2 furin cleavage site.
This is NOT a man made virus
But it could be a man influenced virus.
we will have no R&D to lean on LIKE WE DID FOR THE COVID19 VACCINE
Vaccine research does not require gain of function studies.
Lol. ANY molecular biology research involves plasmids, which is the prime example of “gain of function”. It’s the cornerstone of molecular genetics for the last 40 years.
https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(21)00991-0 https://eprints.gla.ac.uk/250304/1/250304.pdf
You are out of your league dude. Stop spreading lies.
And you believe that batshit?
Absolutely batffling…
It is obvious and clear that the critical sequences responsible for the jump to humans exist in wild type form in nature.
In theory. In practice no evidence of these stages has been found.
However it would be feasible to simulate the conditions required in a lab environment.
Controlled funding for gain of function research does not mean all lab work should stop.
Let me know how “gain of function” research is different than using plasmids. I’ll wait.
The “ANDREW CUOMO: FAILURE” at the bottom of the government site is some random shade, but I enjoy that at least. Fuck Andrew Cuomo
Yeah, fuck Cuomo, but a lot of the reasons for New York’s poor performance at the start of COVID were structural issues that were out of his control.
Agreed. He’s such a piece of shit. I mean, fuck Trump, but also, fuck Cuomo.
By nearly all measures of science, if there was evidence of a natural origin it would have already surfaced
Ah yes, we’ve already discovered everything. Science is over, everyone, let’s go home.
That’ll be a relief for high school students everywhere.
By nearly all measures of religion, if there was evidence for a god, it would have already surfaced.
The longer it takes to find the zoonotic link the higher the probability of lab origin.
The longer it takes to find the lab origin link the higher the probability of zoonotic origin. /s
The problem with conspiracy theories is they’re non-falsifiable. That something is possible is not evidence that it is probable, that something is probable is not evidence that it happened.
Maybe a lab had something go wrong. Maybe that was because they were careless. Maybe that’s because Trump withdrew funding and oversight from the programs that helped labs like this. That should all be investigated. There’s a difference between asking for a due diligence after action report and assigning blame because “it had to be someone’s fault.”
Conspiracy theories are falsifiable! It just means a theory that somebody kept or tried to keep something a secret. I wish the phrase “conspiracy theory” wasn’t universally conflated with “crackpot conspiracy theory” like flat earthers or q-anon. Covid lab leak is not a crackpot theory. People just think it is because we call it a conspiracy theory.
I think we’re long past trying to be prescriptive about the phrase “conspiracy theory”.
There are real conspiracies, but conspiracy theories tend to start from a place of “X must have been at fault” and work backwards from there. Which leads to endless loops of whataboutisms and excuses to try and excuse the existence of the theory at all costs instead of being interested in what actually happened.
It sounds like you’re suggesting “lab leak implies China is to blame” should be seen as evidence against it being a lab leak? Or that any theory which implies blame must be suspect. This just sounds like an excuse to disregard any evidence that it’s a lab leak, since surely anyone who is arguing that it’s a lab-leak must be motivated to do so.
The converse is also true though – surely you must see that there is similarly motivation to argue in reverse. Why don’t we just set aside assuming that we’re all arguing in bad faith.
It’s possible there was a lab leak, and relevant labs should be investigated for the same reason we investigate all plane crashes, it either leads to finding gaps in processes or confirms whether or not a systemic issue was a factor. The probability has decreased as COVID has been further researched and shows more markers of a ‘natural’ development, but it’s generally beneficial to have a comprehensive audit when processes are in question.
That’s not what these people are arguing. They’re arguing that it’s China’s fault and not Trump’s. That’s it. For that to be the case it ‘must’ be a lab leak, and so they’re retroactively finding justification for how that is possible. That they’re running parallel to a reasonable line of logic for a portion of their argument does not validate their argument.
As you are responding to one of my posts I should clarify my position.
They’re arguing that it’s China’s fault and not Trump’s. For that to be the case it ‘must’ be a lab leak.
Zoonotic or lab origin, the outbreak still occurred in China. Fault is only important to reduce further occurrences. Better wet market policies and tighter lab rules can be implemented simultaneously, worldwide without any blame being assigned.
The appalling US response to covid is fully Trumps fault.
The change in the .gov address is designed to compliment the tariffs and anger China.
The reason to highlight the possible lab origin was because original investigations and papers erroneously claimed that a lab origin was not plausible and any discussion about lab origins was censored as being a conspiracy theory.
That censorship is still occurring.
That’s not what these people are arguing.
Yeah I mean I agree. Actually in the top-level comment of this thread, I said the website was BS. I’m not sure what you’re trying to tell me.
The problem with conspiracy theories is they’re non-falsifiable.
Disagree. Some conspiracies can be proven with evidence. E.g. Watergate.
The virus had to come from somewhere. Finding a zoonotic trail of evidence (or at least a partial one) adds weight to a natural origin. There is lots of opportunity for new evidence to naturally come to light.
On the lab leak side evidence has already been destroyed by the Chinese government. New evidence is unlikely to surface naturally.
So lack of evidence on the zoonotic side gradually moves the balance of probability towards a lab leak.
The general public is unlikely reach certainty about either scenario. I bet the Chinese government has a certain answer.
The team noted that there was no way to establish that the animals were infected with SARS-CoV-2. Even if they were infected, they could have caught the infection from a person who brought the virus to the market,
We already have plenty of evidence to conclude zoonotic origin. Bat RNA. Positive cultures in the wet market. Covid genome.
The closest sample [BatCoV RaTG13] is a 96.1% match and was collected 7 years and 1000km away from the wuhan outbreak.
Positive cultures were found in the wet market, but the origin is not confirmed to be zoonotic. Neither bats nor pangolins were being sold at the market. The virus could have arrived there on the shoe of a lab worker.
The virus could have arrived there on the shoe of a lab worker
And it could have been sprayed by flying saucers. How is that any less probable?
You’re using the words without understanding virology or epidemiology or basic probabilities. We have evidence of prior outbreaks like SARS from the wild and positive cultures in the wet market are major pieces of evidence to back up the origin.
And it could have been sprayed by flying saucers. How is that any less probable?
Because only a trail of infected animals arriving at the market would imply a zoonotic origin.
positive cultures in the wet market are major pieces of evidence to back up the origin.
No, because we cannot determine if those virus cultures arrived to the market on an animal, on the shoe of a lab worker or even by ufo.
The data does not help determine the origin. It only documents the spread.
Not at all. You think animals naturally migrated on their own from the forest to the market and would leave a trail? Someone picked one up and brought it in a cage. It only takes one.
I love how everyone online is an armchair zoonotic expert. Your ideas are inexperienced.
Someone picked one up and brought it in a cage.
Possibly, but there is no evidence that this happened. No animals in captivatity or in the wild outside of the wuhan market have been found with early strains of sars-cov-2.
This is why a lab leak remains as a possible origin.
I love how everyone online is an armchair zoonotic expert. Your ideas are inexperienced.
Expertise is not required to understand what NO EVIDENCE means.
The tall letters in all caps.
The dramatic fade to blue.
Trump standing in the middle.
The fancy font on 𝓒𝓸𝓿𝓲𝓭.Oooh the tackiness is too much to bear
Like if nothing else this admin has hired a good designer tho
So the narrative is COVID was a dangerous lab leak - but also, you don’t have to wear a mask?
Consistency is not a strong point of these dumbasses.
It’s pretty standard to play both extremes simultaneously, and people just pick whichever they want to relate to at any given moment.
eg.
- (such-and-such group) are lazy, but also they are taking all the jobs.
- They are stupid, but also have secret organisations that control the world, with mind-control, and lasers that control the weather, etc.
- They are snowflakes obsessed with inclusiveness, but also they want (target-minority-group) to take over.
- They are against free speech; and we must silence them.
I’m sure others can think of more, and variations on those.
The enemy is both strong and weak.
Just a note: It would have been easier to read your post if you used brackets instead of parentheses.
Fair call. It didn’t occur to me to do that, but I understand why you’d prefer it. Originally I was actually naming the groups; but I changed my mind.
If they thought clearly, they wouldn’t be prime targets for conspiracy theories and propaganda. We’re talking about people who can’t think rationally.
USA are sooo close to reinstate flat earth!
Why would he want his photo in the middle of that text? He’s associating himself with negativity, I feel like this is marketing/propaganda 101. It honestly looks like a movie poster where he’s the one leaking it.
China had a Wuhan Covid research lab with lax safety standards, is it really a conspiracy?
Usually you’d assume a high probability at least?
Ok, so people not overwhelmed by the election may remember that even under Biden last year, it was suggested as a solid, if not more likely possibility. Now, their position ultimately was “we don’t think we’ll ever find the truth” but I think part of that is also knowing that finding out is generally not with the trouble.
Naturally Trump doesn’t care about truth or being nuanced with an “probability” of something, so they’re going to be a bit more definitive.
yes it was very clear it is a leak from the research that lab is doing, their research paper about covid prior to the leak still available!
What is a real conspiracy theory is why they refuse to acknowledge the possibility of a leak ! All of them kept saying “It is not a leak” “if you say it is a leak it is a conspiracy theory” it was so bad how they attack anyone suggest it is a leak, I remember people getting banned in reddit for pointing out news or research about the origin or patient zero.
A lab leak will always be a conspiracy theory, in theory a group of people conspired to keep a secret. Even when people like the FBI Director Christopher Wray’s comment that the bureau believes Covid-19 “most likely” originated in a “Chinese government-controlled lab”
Then you have conspiracy of [Peter Daszak leading the WHO investigation] (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/01/20/corrupt-british-zoologist-sanction-wuhan-experiments-covid/)
Wrong. Proof or STFU. Wild type exists with the critical sequence. COVID-19 was not created in a lab. We’ve known that for years. Your ignorance doesn’t prove your paranoia.
Yeah, i agree. I’m not sure of the website but there’s at least a 7/10 chance that lab played a part in this. Feels bad you’re being downvoted by bots that already made up their mind.
Not really. German intelligence just concluded a lab leak was the most likely source. Genetic analysis lines up with that, it’s genetically odd. We will likely never get a “broad st pump” or patient zero for COVID but in April 2025 if you were filing a civil case against the Wuhan institute of virology you would win by the evidence it’s more likely than not.
This is a lie. Sequence analysis was done extensively early on and the critical spike protein changes exist in nature. In fact, that’s what the previous 10 years of research which the vaccine was based upon was done on MERS. Proof or STFU. Your ignorance of biology does not prove your paranoia.
I didn’t say it was a sure sign of being made in a lab, it doesn’t have anything so smoking gun. More the weakness to UV would be common for lab strains among other traits. Again with the you’re never going to get a broad street pump. Ever.
The rigid thinkers among us have a hard time accepting the changing landscape of facts but yes someone probably fucked up at WIV. Just wait for someone to fuck up in Georgia with all these budget cuts.
We need more research not less. And removing all government oversight and regulations will make fuck ups incredibly common, as you say.
More the weakness to UV would be common for lab strains among other traits
What do you mean by this? This doesn’t make any sense. Lab strains mutate just like wild type. If you expose a viral to mutagenic factors (ie UV) it creates mutations that 99.9% of the time cause the virus to be non viable.
Meaning it’s preferable to pick strains weak to UV because UV is common for sterilization tech especially air and it’s likely a lab strain wouldn’t need to mutate such a trait just hitch a ride out of the facility end of shift. That said the animal suspected is the nocturnal bat so.
Like something for all of you to think about. The room the bats are in does not have UV internally, it would hurt the bats. Bats have claws and teeth. Those level 4 suits aren’t made of mythril
No I’m not buying you brand. Your specific concern is unwarranted.
K?
What does it matter if it came from a research lab or a market? It’s a highly mutagenic rna virus and it WILL happen again. Wtf man. There are literally thousands of labs studying coronavirus snd one of them did the research that led to the vaccine that saved millions.
It needs to be fixed so it doesn’t happen again.
You can’t prevent virus mutation and human infection. All you can do is prepare for it by studying and researching as much as possible.
People that are ignorant would call for research to stop. Without the previous research we probably still wouldn’t have a vaccine. Which saved millions.
You can’t prevent virus mutation
You can avoid creating an artificial mutation at the furin cleavage site which hasn’t happened in nature before or since.
This is absolutely a lie and is obvious based upon sequence analysis. Coronavirus is one of the most mutagenic in existence. Wild type has already been identified multiple times with the same spike protein changes.
Proof or STFU.
The insertion of FCS sequences into SARS-like viruses was a specific goal of work proposed by the EHA-WIV-UNC partnership within a 2018 grant proposal (“DEFUSE”) that was submitted to the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
https://theintercept.com/2021/09/06/new-details-emerge-about-coronavirus-research-at-chinese-lab/
PRRA furin cleavage motif at the spike glycoprotein S1/S2 junction by a progenitor of SARS-CoV-2 is absent in other known lineage B beta-coronaviruses, including the newly discovered coronaviruses in bats from Laos and Vietnam, which are the closest known relatives of the covid virus; and, (ii) it introduced the pair of arginine codons (CGG-CGG), whose usage is extremely rare in coronaviruses. With an occurrence rate of only 3%, the arginine CGG codon is considered a minority in SARS CoV-2.
https://bmcgenomdata.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12863-023-01169-8
Do you even read your own bullshit?
From your fucking link: “None of the viruses listed in the write-ups of the experiment are related to the virus that causes Covid-19, SARS-CoV-2”
Just like I thought. Your ignorance of biology does not prove your paranoia.
And I see you’ve added another link from a non peer reviewed bullshit article that claims some similarity in sequence proves it’s human made? You are an idiot. Let me be clear: the critical spike protein sequence is so similar between other coronavirus that the critical work in designing a presentable antigen responsible for vaccine development was already done by Jason McClellan’s lab at Dartmouth before COVID-19 happened. That mRNA sequence was licensed by both Pfizer and Moderna.
Basic science research of coronavirus saved millions of lives because the critical hard and time consuming work had already been done.
This will happen again. And your bullshit conspiracy have gotten research shut down that may cost millions of lives.
