SpaceRaccoon

Joined 13 years ago

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451

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204

Member since

Dec 29

air of mystery and all that

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Comment · 5 years ago

Morales plane was searched. If Snowden was on it, he would have been detained.

It's not that Belarus' actions are admissable. It's that the West is acting in a hypocritical way.

If Belarus had as much power as the US, they surely would have followed the same route and forced all the surrounding nations to close their airspace. The end result would be the same.

Comment · 5 years ago

That would be a fair request, if NATO hadn't engaged in similar actions in the past:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_bombing_of_the_Radio_Te...

Comment · 5 years ago

A reminder that "U.S. officials pushed Brazil to reject Russia’s coronavirus vaccine" [0] for political reasons.

> Under a section titled “Combating malign influences in the Americas,” the HHS report states that countries including Russia “are working to increase their influence in the region to the detriment of US safety and security.” The global affairs office coordinated with other U.S. government agencies “to dissuade countries in the region from accepting aid from these ill-intentioned states,” it says.

The concerted effort to smear the Russian vaccine is clearly the Western version of the anti-vaccine misinformation Russia has been accused of spreading. Textbook projection.

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/03/16/hhs-brazil-s...

Comment · 5 years ago

Thanks for the link.

I read the article, but it only states that the first case from December was not linked to the seafood market ("wet market"), but not that it occurred outside of Wuhan. Did I misread something?

By the way, early on I believed that the virus jumped to humans at the seafood market, which was the prevailing theory at the time, it seemed. But as evidence like the above article came out - noting that many early cases had no link to the seafood market, while still being in Wuhan - it raised suspicions, and lent credence to the lab-leak theory.

> There has been rigorous scholarship done on this question. I recommend reading it given your interest in the subject.

I do, but I'm not convinced. A lot of reporting either relies on appeal to authority ("I'm a PhD, and this couldn't possibly happen, so don't question it"), or is purposely obtuse, confusing lab-leak with lab-synthesized, and by dodging the point, hardly alleviates suspicion.

You must understandably excuse me for being a sceptic. I started wearing masks back in February or March, against the advice of the CDC who was telling me masks increase the rate of spread. At the same time I believed that borders should be closed to limit the rate of spread, while the WHO was telling me that closing borders would do no such thing.

So I am not going to believe something just because an expert tells me to, nor do I find it at all scientific to dismiss politically inconvenient possibilities.

Comment · 5 years ago

I'm not suggesting that either fluid was the pathway by which the virus jumped to humans, nor do I know how it happened, only that evidence suggests researchers interact closely with the animals.

And I am not ready to dismiss the theory but I am always open to hearing evidence to exclude the theory.

Comment · 5 years ago

> There are a lot of bats in Wuhan.

Except everything I've read indicates the bats carrying the most closely related virus are not in Wuhan, not even close:

> The SARS-CoV-2 virus is most closely related to coronaviruses found in certain populations of horseshoe bats that live about 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) away in Yunnan province, China. [0]

[0] https://www.livescience.com/coronavirus-wuhan-lab-complicate...

So why would the virus so strongly appear to originate in Wuhan, and not in another city, closer to the bats' native regions? Appears quite statistically unlikely.

Comment · 5 years ago

Could you explain why evidence that the virus evolved naturally contradicts the lab-leak theory? I'm all ears and waiting to hear the reasoning. As others have pointed out, lab-leak does not imply artificially developed.

> I’m a bioscientist.

And I'm a Bayesian analyst. Surely your position is that it is a coincidence that:

- the virus appeared to originate in Wuhan

- genome sequences from patients were 96% or 89% identical to the Bat CoV ZC45 coronavirus originally found in Rhinolophus affinis

- The bats carrying CoV ZC45 were originally found in Yunnan or Zhejiang province, both of which are more than 900 kilometers away Wuhan

- According to municipal reports and the testimonies of 31 residents and 28 visitors, the bat was never a food source in the city, and no bat was traded in the market

- Wuhan is home to two laboratories conducting research on bat coronavirus

- Within ~280 meters from the market, there was the Wuhan Center for Disease Control & Prevention (WHCDC). WHCDC hosted animals in laboratories for research purposes. In one of their studies, 155 bats including Rhinolophus affinis were captured in Hubei province, and other 450 bats were captured in Zhejiang province

- one of the researchers described that he was once by attacked by bats and the blood of a bat shot on his skin. In another accident, bats peed on him. He was once thrilled for capturing a bat carrying a live tick

Not conclusive by any means, but I have yet to hear reasoning by which we should exclude the lab-leak theory, besides that the virus evolved naturally, which does not contradict the lab-leak theory whatsoever.

Also, from your article:

> As a team of researchers from the WHO

This WHO? [0][1] Doesn't instill much confidence in me, to be sure.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlCYFh8U2xM

[1] https://www.voanews.com/science-health/coronavirus-outbreak/...

Comment · 5 years ago

You are indeed misunderstanding the point.

Smallpox is also naturally originating virus. That doesn't prohibit it from leaking from a lab.