Ok but covid definitely came from a lab

Not saying it was with any malicious intent, but it definitely came from a lab. The epicenter just happened to be the city with the noval coronavirus research facility? I mean, come on. Whose mistake is being covered up with this whole wet market theory? It may have been a Chinese institute but it collaborated heavily with American and Canadian research organizations. I think it's a little naive to lump this in with other conspiracy theories which are dismissed out of hand as outlandish conservative propaganda.

Think, if the two greatest powers in the world, USA and China, both had a hand in accidentally starting a global pandemic, and both have a reputation of covering things up to save face, then wouldn't they both have a vested interest in propegating a false story? Juuust saying! It's pretty sad, honestly.

 

The corona family of viruses have been present in animals since the dawn or time, so they have a high level of immunity.
Viruses cannot transfer to other species through coughing or sneezing, so up to nowa human variant has not mutated. However, it can if we eat raw infected meat.
Since the poor areas of China eat raw meat and fish, along with eating an animal that dies, rather than killing another one, I have little doubt that the virus mutated.
If this happened in the past, after the initial deaths, people would develop natural immunity and since those people did not travel, the outbreaks would have been confined. However, things are changing in China, so the risk is very real.
The nasty virus that hit the west in 2017. may well have been a variant. Spanish flue that hit the west, killing thousands in 1918, could also have been a variant as a result of poor food hygiene during WW1.

What really hit the west was panic, with the fear that the 1 in 1,000 cases that required ICU treatment would overwhelm the hospitals. Prescribing antibiotics during the viral stage became a problem, since they would then become ineffective during the bacterial stage when they were needed. Unfortunately the remaining 99.9% started flocking to the hospitals and disrupting genuine cases that needed urgent treatment. Sending these people home again and telling them to rest for 3 days and take a few Paracetamol tablets was the real problem.

We all contract the current virus during our last 72 hours on this planet, unless we are killed in an accident. It is the normal process of death.
Taking the UK for example, 1,500 people die every day. But the media started claiming that these deaths were additional.
Figures now show that our 2020 death rate was 1.7% up on 2019 and lower than 2017.
Over isolation also hindered the spread of natural immunity, dragging things out to this day.
Some good has come, since working from home and avoiding crowded public transport is now raising our life expectancy.

 

Maybe…..in the US well over a million people died and life expectancy took a hit. Factors include crackpot cures from the then President, equally crackpot schemes that reduced the level of vaccinations, unwillingness of people to take common sense precautions. Sad.

As far as the origin, it’s pretty easy to believe that given the right combination of circumstances and lack of precautions in markets the virus made the jump from animals, perhaps through intermediate species….no lab conspiracy theory necessary.

 

I see both of y'all's points about the reaction to covid. I personally think that it was a pretty severe issue. I mean, a lot of people died that wouldn't have otherwise. And some aspects of social distancing practices, and obviously the vaccine, were extremely necessary to fight what was honestly a pretty serious pandemic.

That said, it is probably also true that other aspects of social distancing practices loweredc our immunity. Not to mention the politicization of covid having been a major issue in the US and in other places more authoritarian style lockdowns have also been problematic. And that's not even to get into the economic effects.

But I see y'all are both pretty convicted that the virus mutated from animal to animal to human, with no involvement of anthropogenic virology research. I would like to point out that the two views are not mutually exclusive, and that the research was being done on bats. Bats, if you remember from the predominating theory about origin in the wet markets, were said to have given it to pangolins, who were sold in the wet markets to humans, and eaten. It would be a reeeeally wierd coincidence if the adjascent virology research on noval coronaviruses on bats had absolutely nothing to do with the bats in the wet markets who had noval coronavirus.

And as for the cover up which led the world to dismiss the involvement of said adjacent research institute in favor of the wet market explanation exclusively... The World Health Organization in their own investigation of the matter concluded that there had been efforts made to obscure evidence, and that because of that the lab leak theory could not be ruled out. In a country that regularly tampers with facts and figures to affect the public narrative - and with the motive being there for powerful interests in the US and Canada to endorse this cover up! I mean it seems like no stretch of the imagination at all to me.

 

As you can see from the TOTAL mortality figures, those million people were simply the ones who died with covid in their system. The total death rate was not affected.
Their is a huge amount of data, showing the covid deaths added. These are meaningless, since we don't die twice.

United States - Historical Death Rate Data
Year Death Rate Growth Rate
2023 9.172 1.070%
2022 9.075 1.090%
2021 8.977 1.090%
2020 8.880 1.120%
2019 8.782 1.120%
2018 8.685 1.220%
2017 8.580 1.240%
2016 8.475 1.270%
2015 8.369 1.270%
2014 8.264 1.290%

Graphs and tables on their own, do not paint a true picture.
The increasing death rate on the above, no doubt reflects an increasing birth rate following WW2

I also share concerns about the early vaccines. The nasty 'long covid' that drags on for months, could well be those vaccines in conflict with the bodies natural immune system.
After threatening to tax imports from China, which would have derailed the corporations gravy train, poor old Donald got blamed for everything.

 

may have escaped from a lab where it was being investigated.
bat species identified and 44 and 45, yes i was shown dna strips of the disease and and of each of these, along with sars and mears.
these were made public even before the current common name for it was settled upon.
the bat dna sequence portions match the covid fingerpring exactly.
(in the journal nature. though not a subscriber, i was on its newsletter mailing list at the time)

how they came to be in circulation among human populations, has not been unambiguously, and probably never will, determined.

you know this is another of those instances of the human ego, rather then acknowledging that it is possible for there to be anything it doesn't know,
making a positive conclusion out of things that are not. arriving at conclusions that only ambiguously appear to relate to their premis.

(often there is a politics of ego motivation for doing so involved)

 

I never understood why the lab leak theory is so politically charged. Lots of labs have leaks - it’s very difficult to maintain perfect precautions. No one is saying it was done maliciously. Why is it when a conspiracy?

 

actually, those who try to claim their fingers ALWAYS have to have a target to point at, do seem to be claiming it was deliberate and malicious (while glossing over that their own doing so is precisely that as well, which seems to be tediusly common practice for their ilk).

 

But it could just be a leak. A leak itself does not in any way represent evidence of malice

 

The fact is we will never know the truth. A few people made lots of money from the deal, and some people will do anything for money, no matter who it hurts.

 

You’re getting closer. The next tough pill to swallow is that it was indeed released intentionally, and Fauci helped fund it.

 

I doubt that anything I provide will change your opinion.

 

Oh, big bad Fauci. Only dedicated half his life toward chasing infectious diseases for a number of administrations - right and left... So, what was his end game? An 83 year old man, has all the money, prowess and notoriety that he could ever want or need, decides to release a crazy disease to infect the world and kill millions....yet not enough to curb population growth...and yet totally fuck the world's economy. Maybe Fauci is an alien or a time jumper...that is as likely a theory as him being the evil Doctor Fo.......

 

Dr. Fauci Backed Controversial Wuhan Lab with U.S. Dollars


“Dr. Anthony Fauci is an adviser to President Donald Trump and something of an American folk hero for his steady, calm leadership during the pandemic crisis. At least one poll shows that Americans trust Fauci more than Trump on the coronavirus pandemic—and few scientists are portrayed on TV by Brad Pitt.

But just last year, the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the organization led by Dr. Fauci, funded scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and other institutions for work on gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses.

In 2019, with the backing of NIAID, the National Institutes of Health committed $3.7 million over six years for research that included some gain-of-function work. The program followed another $3.7 million, 5-year project for collecting and studying bat coronaviruses, which ended in 2019, bringing the total to $7.4 million.

Many scientists have criticized gain of function research, which involves manipulating viruses in the lab to explore their potential for infecting humans, because it creates a risk of starting a pandemic from accidental release.


SARS-CoV-2 , the virus now causing a global pandemic, is believed to have originated in bats. U.S. intelligence, after originally asserting that the coronavirus had occurred naturally, conceded last month that the pandemic may have originated in a leak from the Wuhan lab. (At this point most scientists say it's possible—but not likely—that the pandemic virus was engineered or manipulated.)

Dr. Fauci did not respond to Newsweek's requests for comment. NIH responded with a statement that said in part: "Most emerging human viruses come from wildlife, and these represent a significant threat to public health and biosecurity in the US and globally, as demonstrated by the SARS epidemic of 2002-03, and the current COVID-19 pandemic.... scientific research indicates that there is no evidence that suggests the virus was created in a laboratory."

The NIH research consisted of two parts. The first part began in 2014 and involved surveillance of bat coronaviruses, and had a budget of $3.7 million. The program funded Shi Zheng-Li, a virologist at the Wuhan lab, and other researchers to investigate and catalogue bat coronaviruses in the wild. This part of the project was completed in 2019.

A second phase of the project, beginning that year, included additional surveillance work but also gain-of-function research for the purpose of understanding how bat coronaviruses could mutate to attack humans. The project was run by EcoHealth Alliance, a non-profit research group, under the direction of President Peter Daszak, an expert on disease ecology. NIH canceled the project just this past Friday, April 24th, Politico reported. Daszak did not immediately respond to Newsweekrequests for comment.


The project proposal states: "We will use S protein sequence data, infectious clone technology, in vitro and in vivo infection experiments and analysis of receptor binding to test the hypothesis that % divergence thresholds in S protein sequences predict spillover potential."

In layman's terms, "spillover potential" refers to the ability of a virus to jump from animals to humans, which requires that the virus be able to attach to receptors in the cells of humans. SARS-CoV-2, for instance, is adept at binding to the ACE2 receptor in human lungs and other organs.

According to Richard Ebright, an infectious disease expert at Rutgers University, the project description refers to experiments that would enhance the ability of bat coronavirus to infect human cells and laboratory animals using techniques of genetic engineering. In the wake of the pandemic, that is a noteworthy detail.

Ebright, along with many other scientists, has been a vocal opponent of gain-of-function research because of the risk it presents of creating a pandemic through accidental release from a lab.

Dr. Fauci is renowned for his work on the HIV/AIDS crisis in the 1990s. Born in Brooklyn, he graduated first in his class from Cornell University Medical College in 1966. As head of NIAID since 1984, he has served as an adviser to every U.S. president since Ronald Reagan.

A decade ago, during a controversy over gain-of-function research on bird-flu viruses, Dr. Fauci played an important role in promoting the work. He argued that the research was worth the risk it entailed because it enables scientists to make preparations, such as investigating possible anti-viral medications, that could be useful if and when a pandemic occurred.


The work in question was a type of gain-of-function research that involved taking wild viruses and passing them through live animals until they mutate into a form that could pose a pandemic threat. Scientists used it to take a virus that was poorly transmitted among humans and make it into one that was highly transmissible—a hallmark of a pandemic virus. This work was done by infecting a series of ferrets, allowing the virus to mutate until a ferret that hadn't been deliberately infected contracted the disease.

The work entailed risks that worried even seasoned researchers. More than 200 scientists called for the work to be halted. The problem, they said, is that it increased the likelihood that a pandemic would occur through a laboratory accident.

Dr. Fauci defended the work. "[D]etermining the molecular Achilles' heel of these viruses can allow scientists to identify novel antiviral drug targets that could be used to prevent infection in those at risk or to better treat those who become infected," wrote Fauci and two co-authors in the Washington Post on December 30, 2011. "Decades of experience tells us that disseminating information gained through biomedical research to legitimate scientists and health officials provides a critical foundation for generating appropriate countermeasures and, ultimately, protecting the public health."

Nevertheless, in 2014, under pressure from the Obama administration, the National of Institutes of Health instituted a moratorium on the work, suspending 21 studies.

Three years later, though—in December 2017—the NIH ended the moratorium and the second phase of the NIAID project, which included the gain-of-function research, began. The NIH established a framework for determining how the research would go forward: scientists have to get approval from a panel of experts, who would decide whether the risks were justified.

The reviews were indeed conducted—but in secret, for which the NIH has drawn criticism. In early 2019, after a reporter for Science magazine discovered that the NIH had approved two influenza research projects that used gain of function methods, scientists who oppose this kind of research excoriated the NIH in an editorial in the Washington Post.

"We have serious doubts about whether these experiments should be conducted at all," wrote Tom Inglesby of Johns Hopkins University and Marc Lipsitch of Harvard. "[W]ith deliberations kept behind closed doors, none of us will have the opportunity to understand how the government arrived at these decisions or to judge the rigor and integrity of that process."

Correction 5/5, 6:20 p.m.: The headline of this story has been corrected to reflect that the Wuhan lab received only a part of the millions of U.S. dollars allocated for virus research.



Anthony Fauci: Top US health advisor Dr Fauci backed controversial Wuhan lab for risky coronavirus research | World News - Times of India

RePORT ⟩ RePORTER

RePORT ⟩ RePORTER

If you do the research, it becomes clear that Fauci funded this Gain of Function research on bat coronaviruses. Once that is established in your mind, one has to turn to my second claim, that being that it was released intentionally. This is a bit more speculative on my part admittedly, but it felt clear to me as far back as March 2020 that this was indeed a Lab Leak, before I had all the info. I like to all it Intuition.

Here’s something to chew on: Fauci for some reason decided to say that there will be a “surprise outbreak” during the Trump administration as far back as 2017, just as phase two research was starting back up. He didn’t say there “may possibly” be an outbreak. He said there will be an outbreak. How could he have known such a thing in 2017?

 

Like I said, “I doubt anything I provide will change your opinion.” I like to call it my Intuition.

I can provide more info if you need. But should I bother? It seems clear to me that your beliefs are already set in place.

Could it be that Fauci’s funding of risky Gain of Function research into bat coronaviruses in the Wuhan Lab had absolutely nothing to do with the Pandemic? Lol maaaaybe

Could it be that Fauci’s funding of risky Gain of Function research into bat coronaviruses in the Wuhan Lab had very much to do with the Pandemic? Lol perhaps

One possibility seems quite more likely than the other. I’ll let you make your own decisions. I’ve had enough discussions with people by now that I’m not very interested in wasting much energy trying to convince you of what seems rather obvious to me.