Redundant topics are dumb - just post gifs!!!

[DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt 12301]

1 minute ago, hayden_horn said:

and you're smart enough to know that.

prove it.

[wildcat09 29258]

Yeah, I gotta say OP seems to just be genuinely stupid.

[Trey3216 15325]

20 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

Let's post some news.

Tokyo Olympics still going on.  Foreign fans not allowed.

https://apnews.com/article/world-war-ii-tokyo-coronavirus-pandemic-2020-tokyo-olympics-japan-bec3d048e9b962e5a577eca120cc664b

They should change the logo's sun to the covid-19 spikey ball (the official scientific name).

 

Would look good on their flag as well  

[Mole 4320]

25 minutes ago, Cheeseweasel said:

@immamac

@hayden_horn

 

Please just delete this thread. If the SOP for this site is to allow people to torpedo every thread they don't like so it gets moved to the CR and you allow that, that's fine. It's your site. But I don't want my threads in that fuckpit.

https://www.theonion.com/why-do-all-these-homosexuals-keep-sucking-my-cock-1819584210

[BabaYaga 15212]

25 minutes ago, Cheeseweasel said:

@immamac

@hayden_horn

 

Please just delete this thread. If the SOP for this site is to allow people to torpedo every thread they don't like so it gets moved to the CR and you allow that, that's fine. It's your site. But I don't want my threads in that fuckpit.

[RDCanecutter 26281]

....

[DDD Dad 14252]

16 hours ago, DDD Dad said:

FIFY.

Only took 16 hours.

[hayden_horn 11360]

12 minutes ago, RDCanecutter said:

....

this is quality

[DDD Dad 14252]

1 hour ago, Cheeseweasel said:

It's a news story. Sorry if it doesn't fit your narrative. Perhaps, you should be more introspective and realize that everything doesn't fit your narrow view.

Or keep being a cunt. That's on your conscience and soul, not mine.

I bet you named your sword.

[DigglerontheHoof 21065]

46 minutes ago, Cheeseweasel said:

@immamac

@hayden_horn

 

Please just delete this thread. If the SOP for this site is to allow people to torpedo every thread they don't like so it gets moved to the CR and you allow that, that's fine. It's your site. But I don't want my threads in that fuckpit.

I generally like you as a poster, in spite of your trumpiness.  But this is pure bitchassness, right here.  JFC, talk about your snowflakes. 

[DDD Dad 14252]

25 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

Yeah, I gotta say OP seems to just be genuinely stupid.

[DDD Dad 14252]

33 minutes ago, hayden_horn said:

you're smart enough to know that. 

Debatable.

[mdmost 42865]

I don't think Cheese is dumb but he does seem to suffer from the exact same issue that a lot of the DT regulars who used to come here suffer from. That is they hate liberals and have to own the libs so much that even when faced with something a non-liberal did wrong that's completely legitimate to discuss, they just have to play the what about game. "Yeah, I'll grant Trump fucked everything up and I totes didn't vote for him and absolutely hate him with every fiber of my being, BUT...... WHAT ABOUT FAUCI, CUOMO, DEM GOVERNORS, CDC, BIDEN, etc". Or the usual let's toss out flippant jokey responses to any legitimate point someone is making. It's just astounding. TWO WEEKS! BODIES IN TREES! MASKS FOR LIFE! THEY WERE FAT AND/OR OLD AND WERE GOING TO DIED ANYWAY! Again, 600,000 Americans died. China's an asshole. Yes, we should investigate what went wrong and try to hold them accountable. That doesn't mean we shouldn't look at everything we did wrong here and try to fucking fix it since we're going to deal with another Coronavirus in the future. 

Edited May 27, 2021 by mdmost

[Dahobbs 17447]

Well this is sad. I actually thought the thread got on track and was focused on news for a hot minute. Sad to see that it was the OP @Cheeseweasel who couldn't stop himself from making it political again. 

[dcar00 14035]

https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-health-f98d73476a1a4942ca5528fa5dfff70f

hilarious.  we always laugh when some exec says "need to redouble our efforts" when something they did backfired right in their face.

[DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt 12301]

6 minutes ago, dcar00 said:

https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-health-f98d73476a1a4942ca5528fa5dfff70f

hilarious.  we always laugh when some exec says "need to redouble our efforts" when something they did backfired right in their face.

would you prefer that he obstruct any efforts to seek the truth and fire anyone and everyone that might show a hint of disobedience towards that goal?

why yes, yes you would. 

[Captainant 27464]

4 minutes ago, dcar00 said:

https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-health-f98d73476a1a4942ca5528fa5dfff70f

hilarious.  we always laugh when some exec says "need to redouble our efforts" when something they did backfired right in their face.

Based on this and other reporting, it sounds like the trump admin and pompeo didn't give them much to go on in the way of actual evidence or useful intelligence. Note that the reporting is that the intel community is being ordered by Biden to redouble their efforts, not that Biden "needs to redouble his efforts". 

From the article though, it sounds like there's two leading theories:

Quote

Biden in a statement said the majority of the intelligence community had “coalesced” around those two scenarios but “do not believe there is sufficient information to assess one to be more likely than the other.” He revealed that two agencies lean toward the animal link and “one leans more toward” the lab theory, “each with low or moderate confidence.”

With the current majority opinion among the low/moderate confidence opinions being that it was animal in origin and not from a lab. 

[dcar00 14035]

Just now, DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt said:

would you prefer that he obstruct any efforts to seek the truth and fire anyone and everyone that might show a hint of disobedience towards that goal?

why yes, yes you would. 

LO fucking L, yeah, Uncle Joe is a truth seeker.  he shut it down earlier but then when the cat got loose he had to "redouble his efforts".  Quit protecting the doddering old fool.  the about face on this is hilarious.

[DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt 12301]

Just now, dcar00 said:

LO fucking L, yeah, Uncle Joe is a truth seeker.  he shut it down earlier but then when the cat got loose he had to "redouble his efforts".  Quit protecting the doddering old fool.  the about face on this is hilarious.

ah yes, a MAGA buffoon pulling his best Lt. Kaffee 'I WANT THE TRUTH!'

sorry bubba, you don't get to play that card anymore.

[Anastasis 23394]

Would be interesting to know which of the IC agencies break which way.  Would give a sense as to the types of evidence pointing one direction of the other (human intelligence vs. signal).

[DDD Dad 14252]

Would be interesting to know which of the IC agencies break which way.  Would give a sense as to the types of evidence pointing one direction of the other (human intelligence vs. signal).

I wonder if there is a dossier on any of this.

[hobbes2702 12846]

2 hours ago, DDD Dad said:

I bet you named your sword.

I get this reference 

[Anastasis 23394]

10 minutes ago, DDD Dad said:

I wonder if there is a dossier on any of this.

Ask Hugo. 

[Brisketexan 104628]

13 minutes ago, DDD Dad said:

I wonder if there is a dossier on any of this.

When does a notebook of materials become a dossier?  Is it a sophistication thing?  Does it turn the binder into something more french?  Does it have to start smoking skinny cigarettes and not wearing deodarant?

"Just asking questions."

[Mrs Whiggins 13049]

Pompeo is using the lab leak idea for political capitol. Where is his evidence?

Edited May 27, 2021 by Mrs Whiggins
Oh, I just realized this is a completely different thread. Dammit. There are now three threads in CR about COVID. Sorry if this is the wrong one. I only post political stuff in the CR and this was in CR so yeah. Good Lord this is a hot mess.

[SydneyCarton 47884]

26 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

When does a notebook of materials become a dossier?  Is it a sophistication thing?  Does it turn the binder into something more french?  Does it have to start smoking skinny cigarettes and not wearing deodarant?

"Just asking questions."

It's when it's organized in something glossy. 

[Trey3216 15325]

1 hour ago, DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt said:

ah yes, a MAGA buffoon pulling his best Lt. Kaffee 'I WANT THE TRUTH!'

sorry bubba, you don't get to play that card anymore.

Nor do you get to play the "anyone that thinks this was a lab leak is a fucking fascist xenophobe" card anymore.  Matter of fact, you don't have many cards to play other than 600,000 Americans died and we should have done better, which we all agree on.  

[Trey3216 15325]

35 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

When does a notebook of materials become a dossier?  Is it a sophistication thing?  Does it turn the binder into something more french?  Does it have to start smoking skinny cigarettes and not wearing deodarant?

"Just asking questions."

Don't forget about the martini with the skinny cigarettes.  

[DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt 12301]

24 minutes ago, Trey3216 said:

Nor do you get to play the "anyone that thinks this was a lab leak is a fucking fascist xenophobe" card anymore.  Matter of fact, you don't have many cards to play other than 600,000 Americans died and we should have done better, which we all agree on.  

can i still play the 'anyone that thinks it was a lab leak is a moron' card?

but no, you'd be incorrect if you thought your buds in DT thought 'we should have done better'....in fact, at every step along the way (prior to january 20th), they've routinely spewed 'virus gonna virus' non-sense while yelling 'BUT (insert country)!'

you'll notice post 1/20, they have become INCREDIBLY ANGRY with what they perceive as mixed messages from the government and have placed a massive amount of import towards that messaging. prior to 1/20, not an inkling of concern about the same.

[BabaYaga 15212]

2 hours ago, Anastasis said:

Would be interesting to know which of the IC agencies break which way.  Would give a sense as to the types of evidence pointing one direction of the other (human intelligence vs. signal).

LOL, you'll never know.  Keeping it "with the IC's" is a convenient way of saying a wet blanket has been thrown over the whole thing.  Out of sight.  Out of mind.  

If the initial estimates were accurate and China knew, yet covered it up - more than 95% of the global fatalities fall squarely on their shoulders.  

[dcar00 14035]

2 hours ago, DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt said:

ah yes, a MAGA buffoon pulling his best Lt. Kaffee 'I WANT THE TRUTH!'

sorry bubba, you don't get to play that card anymore.

ah yes a member of the dunderhead liberal-ati, when the green curtain on his Russia,Russia,Russia party gets pulled back.  keep at it.

[dcar00 14035]

33 minutes ago, DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt said:

can i still play the 'anyone that thinks it was a lab leak is a moron' card?

but no, you'd be incorrect if you thought your buds in DT thought 'we should have done better'....in fact, at every step along the way (prior to january 20th), they've routinely spewed 'virus gonna virus' non-sense while yelling 'BUT (insert country)!'

you'll notice post 1/20, they have become INCREDIBLY ANGRY with what they perceive as mixed messages from the government and have placed a massive amount of import towards that messaging. prior to 1/20, not an inkling of concern about the same.

no one is INCREDIBLY ANGRY OMG OMG.  we are laughing at your ilk who think Biden and his admin are anything but bumbling fools.

[Captainant 27464]

5 minutes ago, dcar00 said:

no one is INCREDIBLY ANGRY OMG OMG.  we are laughing at your ilk who think Biden and his admin are anything but bumbling fools.

No, I'm pretty sure chickensandwich has his jimmies in quite the rustle

[SmokeyTheBear 5562]

7 minutes ago, dcar00 said:

no one is INCREDIBLY ANGRY OMG OMG.  we are laughing at your ilk who think Biden and his admin are anything but bumbling fools.

[wildcat09 29258]

It's funny that the DT crowd are actually so stupid they think there was nothing to the Russia scandal.

[bolverk 29401]

Scientists Don’t Want to Ignore the ‘Lab Leak’ Theory, Despite No New Evidence
Many scientists welcomed President Biden’s call for a more rigorous investigation of a virus lab in Wuhan, China, though they said the so-called lab leak theory was still unlikely.

On the heels of President Biden’s abrupt order to U.S. intelligence agencies to investigate the origins of the coronavirus, many scientists reacted positively, reflecting their push in recent weeks for more information about the work of a virus lab in Wuhan, China. But they cautioned against expecting an answer in the three-month time frame of the president’s request.

After long steering clear of the debate, some influential scientists have lately become more open to expressing uncertainties about the origins of the virus. If the two most vocal poles of the argument are natural spillover vs. laboratory leak, these new voices have added a third point of view: a resounding undecided.

“In the beginning, there was a lot of pressure against speaking up, because it was tied to conspiracies and Trump supporters,” said Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist at Yale University. “There was very little rational discussion going on in the beginning.”

Virologists still largely lean toward the theory that infected animals — perhaps a bat, or another animal raised for food — spread the virus to humans outside of a lab. There is no direct evidence for the “lab leak” theory that Chinese researchers isolated the virus, which then infected a lab worker.

But China’s integral role in a joint inquiry with the World Health Organization made its dismissal of the lab leak theory difficult to accept, Dr. Iwasaki and 17 other scientists argued in the journal Science this month.

“I typically only speak about a topic publicly if I have some new scientific result that makes me confident about a new discovery or conclusion,” said one of the organizers of that letter, Jesse Bloom, who studies the evolution of viruses at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. “In the case of SARS-CoV-2 origins, I still am not confident about what happened.”

Spoiler

 

But “as time went on, it became clear that not saying anything about the origins was being interpreted as agreeing with the idea that the virus definitely originated from a zoonosis,” he said, referring to an animal spillover.

On Wednesday, two weeks after that letter was published, President Biden called on intelligence agencies to “redouble their efforts” and deliver a report to him within 90 days. On Thursday Mr. Biden said he expected to release the report to the public.

While researchers generally welcome a sustained search for answers, some warn that those answers may not arrive any time soon — if ever.

“At the end of this process, I would not be surprised if we did not know much more than we know now,” said W. Ian Lipkin, a virologist at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University who was one of the first U.S. scientists to visit China in early 2020 and consult with public health authorities there.

China’s lack of cooperation with the W.H.O. has long fueled suspicions about how the coronavirus, known as SARS-CoV-2, had emerged seemingly from nowhere to seize the world.

In February 2020, the Chinese government agreed to host a scientific mission, but it came under fire from critics because it was constructed as a cooperative study with international experts and Chinese scientists, and the Chinese controlled access to data. In addition, the mission had no mandate to investigate laboratories where research on viruses was conducted.

In early days, speculations even circulated that a Chinese biological warfare program had produced the virus. In March 2020, Dr. Lipkin and colleagues published a letter in which they dismissed that possibility.

“There was no evidence to suggest this had been weaponized,” Dr. Lipkin said. “I haven’t changed my view on that.”

Evolution was more than capable of brewing a new pandemic virus, he and other experts said. Bats and many other animals are hosts to coronaviruses. When an animal is infected by two strains of coronaviruses, they can swap genetic material in a process called recombination.

As scientists find more animal coronaviruses, they can recognize more and more pieces of SARS-CoV-2 spread out among them. Researchers have also been able to reconstruct some of the evolutionary steps by which SARS-CoV-2 evolved into a potential human pathogen while it was still infecting animals.

This pattern is probably one that’s been followed by many viruses that are now major burdens on human health. H.I.V., for example, most likely had its origin in the early 1900s, when hunters in West Africa got infected with viruses that infected chimpanzees and other primates.

But some scientists thought it was too soon to conclude something similar happened in the case of SARS-CoV-2. After all, the coronavirus first came to light in the city of Wuhan, home to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where researchers study dozens of strains of coronaviruses collected in caves in southern China.

Still, that a top lab studying this family of viruses happens to be located in the same city where the epidemic emerged could very well be a coincidence. Wuhan is an urban center larger than New York City, with a steady flow of visitors from other parts of China. It also has many large markets dealing in wildlife brought from across China and beyond. When wild animals are kept in close quarters, viruses have an opportunity to jump from species to species, sometimes resulting in dangerous recombinations that can lead to new diseases.

That lab’s research began after another coronavirus led to the SARS epidemic in 2002. Researchers soon found relatives of that virus, called SARS-CoV, in bats, as well as civet cats, which are sold in Chinese markets. The discovery opened the eyes of scientists to all the animal coronaviruses with the potential of spilling over the species line and starting a new pandemic.

Virologists can take many measures to reduce the risk of getting infected with the viruses they study. But over the years, some accidents have happened. Researchers have gotten sick, and they’ve infected others with their experimental viruses.

In 2004, for example, a researcher at the National Institute of Virology in Beijing got infected with the coronavirus that causes SARS. She passed it on to others, including her mother, who died from the infection.

In 2020, the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic became a new front in a long-running debate over lab security, one that turns on the question of whether the risks of studying and sometimes manipulating animal viruses outweigh the potential for that work to help guard against future outbreaks.

“This kind of research has been controversial,” said Filippa Lentzos, a biosecurity researcher at King’s College London.

Chinese scientists and government officials have denied that the Covid-19 pandemic was the result of a lab leak. And a number of outside scientists also dismissed the idea.

Robert Garry, a virologist at Tulane Medical School and a co-author of Dr. Lipkin’s letter, observed that Chinese scientists would have to have collected SARS-CoV-2 and then grown it in a colony of cells, but somehow never publish any details of it even as they published reports on other coronaviruses for years.

“It makes no sense to me. Why did they hold onto the virus?” Dr. Garry said.

Other scientists felt that, at the very least, the possibility of a lab leak should be explored. But when Trump administration officials claimed the virus might be a bioweapon, some researchers said, it cast a shadow over the idea of a lab leak.

Those researchers pinned their hopes on a joint inquiry by the W.H.O. and China, even as the Chinese government repeatedly tried to bend the investigation to its advantage.

At the same time, believers in the possibility of a lab leak were trying to prepare the ground for scientists to speak more openly about their misgivings. In a series of open letters, a collection of researchers that became known as the Paris group took pains to express concerns about the joint inquiry and uncertainty over the virus’s origins without overtly selling the lab leak theory.

“I toned down some of the letters myself,” said Nikolai Petrovsky, a professor of medicine at Flinders University in Australia. “The minute we went too far down the path that we think it’s a lab leak, it was just going to be crucified.”

In March 2021, the W.H.O.-China team released a report that dedicated only four out of 313 pages to the possibility of a lab leak, without any substantial data to back up their conclusion that it was highly unlikely.

Dr. Iwasaki and like-minded scientists decided they had to push back with their own letter. “We feel that it’s really time to speak up about it, and get more science behind what’s going on,” she said.

Yet Dr. Iwasaki stressed that she did not see a clear case for a lab leak. “I’m completely open-minded about the possibilities,” she said. “There’s so little evidence for either of these things, that it’s almost like a tossup.”

Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and co-author of the letter with Dr. Iwasaki, said that it made other scientists more comfortable talking about what they did and did not yet know about the pandemic’s origins. “That’s what we wanted to have happen,” he said.

Speaking recently to the former New York Times journalist Donald McNeil Jr., Dr. Lipkin said he was dismayed to learn of two coronavirus studies from the Wuhan Institute of Virology that had been carried out with only a modest level of safety measures, known as BSL-2.

In an interview with The Times, Dr. Lipkin said this fact wasn’t proof in itself that SARS-CoV-2 spread from the lab. “But it certainly does raise the possibility that must be considered,” he said.

A BSL-2 level of research would also add to the difficulty researchers will face trying to pin down clear evidence that a coronavirus infected the staff. At higher levels of security, staff regularly give blood samples that can be studied later for genetic material from viruses and antibodies against them. There may be no such record for SARS-CoV-2.

A number of researchers remain unpersuaded by the possibility of a lab leak. “This pathway remains the least likely of all for the origin of COVID-19,” said Peter Daszak, a virologist at EcoHealth Alliance who has worked frequently with the Wuhan virologists.

“On the other hand, there is a great deal of evidence that these viruses originate in wildlife, and have previously and repeatedly infected people who are highly exposed to these animals, work in the wildlife trade or in wildlife farms and markets,” Dr. Daszak said.

Earlier this month, Dr. Garry of Tulane argued that the genetic variations in early cases of Covid-19 in Wuhan could be explained by wild animals being brought to animal markets in the city. “If you suppose that the viruses came in through the wildlife trade, then it’s pretty simple and straightforward,” he said.

Even if SARS-CoV-2 jumped from bats or other animals to humans outside of a lab, as Dr. Garry suspects, it will be hard to find airtight proof for that pathway. When animals die, they take their viruses with them.

While scientists have fairly good evidence for how two coronaviruses — the cause of SARS and MERS — jumped from bats to humans, the origins of the other four coronaviruses that infect humans remain a mystery.

“Sometimes you get lucky, sometimes you don’t,” Dr. Garry said. “It can take decades.”

 

 

[Guest Lobo]

that's just natural fucking leadership right there.  Staring right directly into the most powerful solar eclipse in his lifetime in North America.  

That's just fucking balls and you fucking libs are just jealous.  

You know how he beat Covid-19 so easily?  Because of that UV light.  The Sun was obfuscated by the Moon.  So what did Trump do, he shoved his giant fucking noggin as close as he could to the sun.  He opened up his nostrils and his eyeballs and he sucked that injury-causing UV light right into his body like a goddamn champ.  He fucking ate that shit up.  Took at all the UV light the solar eclipse could spare and went back for seconds.  He puts mustard on it and eats the fucking shit.  The blinding light don't even bother him.  Fucking tough as nails.  We were lucky to have him as long as we did.  Fucking pussy Biden probably watched the eclipse through a fucking paper plate he stole at a black cookout.  

[BabaYaga 15212]

25 minutes ago, bolverk said:

Scientists Don’t Want to Ignore the ‘Lab Leak’ Theory, Despite No New Evidence
Many scientists welcomed President Biden’s call for a more rigorous investigation of a virus lab in Wuhan, China, though they said the so-called lab leak theory was still unlikely.

On the heels of President Biden’s abrupt order to U.S. intelligence agencies to investigate the origins of the coronavirus, many scientists reacted positively, reflecting their push in recent weeks for more information about the work of a virus lab in Wuhan, China. But they cautioned against expecting an answer in the three-month time frame of the president’s request.

After long steering clear of the debate, some influential scientists have lately become more open to expressing uncertainties about the origins of the virus. If the two most vocal poles of the argument are natural spillover vs. laboratory leak, these new voices have added a third point of view: a resounding undecided.

“In the beginning, there was a lot of pressure against speaking up, because it was tied to conspiracies and Trump supporters,” said Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist at Yale University. “There was very little rational discussion going on in the beginning.”

Virologists still largely lean toward the theory that infected animals — perhaps a bat, or another animal raised for food — spread the virus to humans outside of a lab. There is no direct evidence for the “lab leak” theory that Chinese researchers isolated the virus, which then infected a lab worker.

But China’s integral role in a joint inquiry with the World Health Organization made its dismissal of the lab leak theory difficult to accept, Dr. Iwasaki and 17 other scientists argued in the journal Science this month.

“I typically only speak about a topic publicly if I have some new scientific result that makes me confident about a new discovery or conclusion,” said one of the organizers of that letter, Jesse Bloom, who studies the evolution of viruses at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. “In the case of SARS-CoV-2 origins, I still am not confident about what happened.”

  Reveal hidden contents

 

But “as time went on, it became clear that not saying anything about the origins was being interpreted as agreeing with the idea that the virus definitely originated from a zoonosis,” he said, referring to an animal spillover.

On Wednesday, two weeks after that letter was published, President Biden called on intelligence agencies to “redouble their efforts” and deliver a report to him within 90 days. On Thursday Mr. Biden said he expected to release the report to the public.

While researchers generally welcome a sustained search for answers, some warn that those answers may not arrive any time soon — if ever.

“At the end of this process, I would not be surprised if we did not know much more than we know now,” said W. Ian Lipkin, a virologist at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University who was one of the first U.S. scientists to visit China in early 2020 and consult with public health authorities there.

China’s lack of cooperation with the W.H.O. has long fueled suspicions about how the coronavirus, known as SARS-CoV-2, had emerged seemingly from nowhere to seize the world.

In February 2020, the Chinese government agreed to host a scientific mission, but it came under fire from critics because it was constructed as a cooperative study with international experts and Chinese scientists, and the Chinese controlled access to data. In addition, the mission had no mandate to investigate laboratories where research on viruses was conducted.

In early days, speculations even circulated that a Chinese biological warfare program had produced the virus. In March 2020, Dr. Lipkin and colleagues published a letter in which they dismissed that possibility.

“There was no evidence to suggest this had been weaponized,” Dr. Lipkin said. “I haven’t changed my view on that.”

Evolution was more than capable of brewing a new pandemic virus, he and other experts said. Bats and many other animals are hosts to coronaviruses. When an animal is infected by two strains of coronaviruses, they can swap genetic material in a process called recombination.

As scientists find more animal coronaviruses, they can recognize more and more pieces of SARS-CoV-2 spread out among them. Researchers have also been able to reconstruct some of the evolutionary steps by which SARS-CoV-2 evolved into a potential human pathogen while it was still infecting animals.

This pattern is probably one that’s been followed by many viruses that are now major burdens on human health. H.I.V., for example, most likely had its origin in the early 1900s, when hunters in West Africa got infected with viruses that infected chimpanzees and other primates.

But some scientists thought it was too soon to conclude something similar happened in the case of SARS-CoV-2. After all, the coronavirus first came to light in the city of Wuhan, home to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where researchers study dozens of strains of coronaviruses collected in caves in southern China.

Still, that a top lab studying this family of viruses happens to be located in the same city where the epidemic emerged could very well be a coincidence. Wuhan is an urban center larger than New York City, with a steady flow of visitors from other parts of China. It also has many large markets dealing in wildlife brought from across China and beyond. When wild animals are kept in close quarters, viruses have an opportunity to jump from species to species, sometimes resulting in dangerous recombinations that can lead to new diseases.

That lab’s research began after another coronavirus led to the SARS epidemic in 2002. Researchers soon found relatives of that virus, called SARS-CoV, in bats, as well as civet cats, which are sold in Chinese markets. The discovery opened the eyes of scientists to all the animal coronaviruses with the potential of spilling over the species line and starting a new pandemic.

Virologists can take many measures to reduce the risk of getting infected with the viruses they study. But over the years, some accidents have happened. Researchers have gotten sick, and they’ve infected others with their experimental viruses.

In 2004, for example, a researcher at the National Institute of Virology in Beijing got infected with the coronavirus that causes SARS. She passed it on to others, including her mother, who died from the infection.

In 2020, the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic became a new front in a long-running debate over lab security, one that turns on the question of whether the risks of studying and sometimes manipulating animal viruses outweigh the potential for that work to help guard against future outbreaks.

“This kind of research has been controversial,” said Filippa Lentzos, a biosecurity researcher at King’s College London.

Chinese scientists and government officials have denied that the Covid-19 pandemic was the result of a lab leak. And a number of outside scientists also dismissed the idea.

Robert Garry, a virologist at Tulane Medical School and a co-author of Dr. Lipkin’s letter, observed that Chinese scientists would have to have collected SARS-CoV-2 and then grown it in a colony of cells, but somehow never publish any details of it even as they published reports on other coronaviruses for years.

“It makes no sense to me. Why did they hold onto the virus?” Dr. Garry said.

Other scientists felt that, at the very least, the possibility of a lab leak should be explored. But when Trump administration officials claimed the virus might be a bioweapon, some researchers said, it cast a shadow over the idea of a lab leak.

Those researchers pinned their hopes on a joint inquiry by the W.H.O. and China, even as the Chinese government repeatedly tried to bend the investigation to its advantage.

At the same time, believers in the possibility of a lab leak were trying to prepare the ground for scientists to speak more openly about their misgivings. In a series of open letters, a collection of researchers that became known as the Paris group took pains to express concerns about the joint inquiry and uncertainty over the virus’s origins without overtly selling the lab leak theory.

“I toned down some of the letters myself,” said Nikolai Petrovsky, a professor of medicine at Flinders University in Australia. “The minute we went too far down the path that we think it’s a lab leak, it was just going to be crucified.”

In March 2021, the W.H.O.-China team released a report that dedicated only four out of 313 pages to the possibility of a lab leak, without any substantial data to back up their conclusion that it was highly unlikely.

Dr. Iwasaki and like-minded scientists decided they had to push back with their own letter. “We feel that it’s really time to speak up about it, and get more science behind what’s going on,” she said.

Yet Dr. Iwasaki stressed that she did not see a clear case for a lab leak. “I’m completely open-minded about the possibilities,” she said. “There’s so little evidence for either of these things, that it’s almost like a tossup.”

Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and co-author of the letter with Dr. Iwasaki, said that it made other scientists more comfortable talking about what they did and did not yet know about the pandemic’s origins. “That’s what we wanted to have happen,” he said.

Speaking recently to the former New York Times journalist Donald McNeil Jr., Dr. Lipkin said he was dismayed to learn of two coronavirus studies from the Wuhan Institute of Virology that had been carried out with only a modest level of safety measures, known as BSL-2.

In an interview with The Times, Dr. Lipkin said this fact wasn’t proof in itself that SARS-CoV-2 spread from the lab. “But it certainly does raise the possibility that must be considered,” he said.

A BSL-2 level of research would also add to the difficulty researchers will face trying to pin down clear evidence that a coronavirus infected the staff. At higher levels of security, staff regularly give blood samples that can be studied later for genetic material from viruses and antibodies against them. There may be no such record for SARS-CoV-2.

A number of researchers remain unpersuaded by the possibility of a lab leak. “This pathway remains the least likely of all for the origin of COVID-19,” said Peter Daszak, a virologist at EcoHealth Alliance who has worked frequently with the Wuhan virologists.

“On the other hand, there is a great deal of evidence that these viruses originate in wildlife, and have previously and repeatedly infected people who are highly exposed to these animals, work in the wildlife trade or in wildlife farms and markets,” Dr. Daszak said.

Earlier this month, Dr. Garry of Tulane argued that the genetic variations in early cases of Covid-19 in Wuhan could be explained by wild animals being brought to animal markets in the city. “If you suppose that the viruses came in through the wildlife trade, then it’s pretty simple and straightforward,” he said.

Even if SARS-CoV-2 jumped from bats or other animals to humans outside of a lab, as Dr. Garry suspects, it will be hard to find airtight proof for that pathway. When animals die, they take their viruses with them.

While scientists have fairly good evidence for how two coronaviruses — the cause of SARS and MERS — jumped from bats to humans, the origins of the other four coronaviruses that infect humans remain a mystery.

“Sometimes you get lucky, sometimes you don’t,” Dr. Garry said. “It can take decades.”

 

 

JFC, there is no evidence because China destroyed all the lab samples and erased all the data and physically destroyed the servers, then "disappeared" at least one scientist and one reporter that dared to question these actions while rest of the entire scientific community has a standing gag order.

Maybe it came from a bat, in caves that were over a thousands miles away, in winter, when there are no bats.  Maybe?  Maybe a level 4 biolab doing GOF research on coronaviruses cited earlier for lax safety protocols and having had scientists die mysteriously from "pneumonia-like" symptoms is all a giant coincidence that it happened right next to where the outbreak started?  Maybe?  So what specifically is this administration doing about it?  Having the "IC" snoop around?  OK?  What's the status?  If this got a fraction of the Mueller coverage, there'd be outrage in the streets if even the few facts we do know were plastered on the evening news.

[Willfully Horn 7915]

20 hours ago, phdhorn said:

 

Combo of a little hubris, new variant infections (UK and India) bad organization, vaccine shipment delays (that one not their fault), and one of the most densely populated countries in the world doing what they might be expected to do - infect.  Like India.  Very surprised it didn't happen last year, so this don't surprise me at all.

They're saying call off the Olympics.  Might have time to rescue it, but it doesn't seem like a good idea at all right now.  I'd recommend a slight change in plans.  Still have them but for instance this would be the diving competition:

 

Hurdles.

[Anastasis 23394]

6 minutes ago, BabaYaga said:

Maybe it came from a bat, in caves that were over a thousands miles away, in winter, when there are no bats. 

Still waiting for someone to give a plausible and concrete explanation, maybe with some basis in actual reality-based evidence, as to how this highly transmissible virus got from a cave in Yunnan where the relevant bat species interact to Wuhan without leaving any trace or trail along the way.  Just connect some dots with evidence. The alternative explanation is pretty straightforward since we know that the WIV researchers were collecting specimens from those very caves and transmitting them back to Wuhan. 

 

 

[bolverk 29401]

9 minutes ago, BabaYaga said:

JFC, there is no evidence because China destroyed all the lab samples and erased all the data and physically destroyed the servers, then "disappeared" at least one scientist and one reporter that dared to question these actions while rest of the entire scientific community has a standing gag order.

Maybe it came from a bat, in caves that were over a thousands miles away, in winter, when there are no bats.  Maybe?  Maybe a level 4 biolab doing GOF research on coronaviruses cited earlier for lax safety protocols and having had scientists die mysteriously from "pneumonia-like" symptoms is all a giant coincidence that it happened right next to where the outbreak started?  Maybe?  So what specifically is this administration doing about it?  Having the "IC" snoop around?  OK?  What's the status?  If this got a fraction of the Mueller coverage, there'd be outrage in the streets if even the few facts we do know were plastered on the evening news.

If China isn't cooperating, then there are fewer options for the international science community to work with. Biden has therefore called on our intelligence community to "re-double their efforts" using whatever tools they have at their disposal. They have been ordered to issue a report within 90 days, which Biden says he'll make public. That's the status.

Quote

 

Avril D. Haines, the director of national intelligence, has been working with various intelligence agencies, bringing together officials with divergent views to discuss them, to review the shifting science and to push for additional intelligence collection.

Still, Mr. Biden’s order was an abrupt example of presidential intervention in the collection of raw data by those charged with collecting and analyzing intelligence on his behalf. Presidents are often hesitant to appear becoming overly involved in the preparation of the intelligence briefings they receive, though Mr. Biden has been active in asking for intelligence reports on issues including Russian aggressions and domestic terrorism.

The president had asked in March for an internal assessment of the virus’s origins, which was delivered to him two weeks ago in his Presidential Daily Brief of intelligence, according to a senior White House official and an administration official. That started a discussion, the officials said, about declassifying some of the findings and having intelligence officials issue a public statement.

The statement — which described the lack of consensus among intelligence agencies — was ready this week, but Mr. Biden felt it would not help clarify the issue for the public, according to the senior official. And on Tuesday, China took a hard line against cooperating with the W.H.O. on further inquiries, which prompted Mr. Biden to press for a more robust United States investigation, the official said.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/26/us/politics/biden-coronavirus-origins.html

[Willfully Horn 7915]

5 hours ago, hayden_horn said:

what non political discussion did you imagine would result from posting that couple lines of text

Super fragile calisthenics and expert halitosis.

[Orale 1087]

I'm just a simple southern lawyer so I'll ask the dumb question. What's the joke with the ellipses?

[RDCanecutter 26281]

3 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

When does a notebook of materials become a dossier?  Is it a sophistication thing?  Does it turn the binder into something more french?  Does it have to start smoking skinny cigarettes and not wearing deodarant?

"Just asking questions."

Pretty simple. It just has to start dossing.

[Anastasis 23394]

5 minutes ago, Orale said:

I'm just a simple southern lawyer so I'll ask the dumb question. What's the joke with the ellipses?

Hayden did his best to clean up the political garbage in one of the thread by editing every single one such that they were just ellipses.  It was a stroke of genius that was only surpassed by the response up thread, or perhaps the idea that handing out some 69 hour banninations would clear this shit up pretty quick. 

[bolverk 29401]

U.S. Is Said to Have Unexamined Intelligence to Pore Over on Virus Origins
Intelligence officials have told the White House that computer analysis may shed light on the mystery.

WASHINGTON — President Biden’s call for a 90-day sprint to understand the origins of the coronavirus pandemic came after intelligence officials told the White House they had a raft of still-unexamined evidence that required additional computer analysis that might shed light on the mystery, according to senior administration officials.

The officials declined to describe the new evidence. But the revelation that they are hoping to apply an extraordinary amount of computer power to the question of whether the virus accidentally leaked from a Chinese laboratory suggests that the government may not have exhausted its databases of Chinese communications, the movement of lab workers and the pattern of the outbreak of the disease around the city of Wuhan.

In addition to marshaling scientific resources, Mr. Biden’s push is intended to prod American allies and intelligence agencies to mine existing information — like intercepts, witnesses or biological evidence — as well as hunt for new intelligence to determine whether the Chinese government covered up an accidental leak.

Mr. Biden committed on Thursday to making the results of the review public, but added a caveat: “unless there’s something I’m unaware of.”

His call for the study has both domestic and international political ramifications. It prompted his critics to argue that the president had dismissed the possibility that the lab was the origin until the Chinese government this week rejected allowing further investigation by the World Health Organization. And, administration officials said, the White House hopes American allies will contribute more vigorously to a serious exploration of a theory that, until now, they considered at best unlikely, and at worst a conspiracy theory.

So far, the effort to glean evidence from intercepted communications within China, a notoriously hard target to penetrate, has yielded little. Current and former intelligence officials say they strongly doubt anyone will find an email or a text message or a document that shows evidence of a lab accident.

One allied nation passed on information that three workers in the Wuhan virological laboratory were hospitalized with serious flulike symptoms in the autumn of 2019. The information about the sickened workers is considered important, but officials cautioned that it did not constitute evidence that they caught the virus at the laboratory — they may have brought it there.

The White House is hoping that allies and partners can tap their networks of human sources to find additional information about what happened inside the laboratory. While the United States has been rebuilding its own sources in China, it has still not fully recovered from the elimination of its network inside the country a decade ago. As a result, having allies press their informants about what went on inside the Wuhan Institute of Virology will be a key part of the intelligence push ahead.

The inquiry has not reached a dead end, a senior Biden administration official said. Officials would not describe the kind of computational analysis they want to do.

Spoiler

 

Administration and intelligence officials say it will be as much the work of scientists as spies in trying to unravel how the pandemic was unleashed. The Biden administration has been working to improve its scientific expertise on the National Intelligence Council. Senior officials have told the spy agencies that their science-oriented divisions, which have been working on the issue for months, will play a prominent role in the revitalized inquiry.

The new inquiry will also tap the national labs and other scientific resources of the federal government that previously have not been directly involved in the intelligence effort, the senior administration official said.

Mr. Biden’s announcement that he will require a report from the intelligence community had elements of showmanship. In terms of domestic politics, he is trying to take the initiative on an issue Republicans have long focused on. Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, who has long argued the coronavirus could have emerged accidentally from the Wuhan lab, said Mr. Biden’s order was “better late than never, but far from adequate.”

And on an international front, Mr. Biden called out Chinese recalcitrance to cooperate on investigations both to pressure Beijing to reverse course but also to push allies to focus their own intelligence efforts on examining the theory that the coronavirus might have accidentally leaked from the lab.

Like scientists and the broader public, the intelligence community remains uncertain about the origins of the coronavirus. No definitive intelligence has emerged, and some current and former officials expressed caution that much more can be gathered in 90 days. While the Office of the Director of National Intelligence will deliver a report before summer’s end, the inquiry will most likely have to be extended.

On Wednesday, Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters he had not seen any conclusive evidence about the cause of the pandemic, but supported the effort to look deeper. “The amount of death, pain and suffering that was experienced in this pandemic is huge,” he said. “We need to know the origin, how this happened.”

The effort to uncover the origins of the coronavirus began more than a year ago, during the Trump administration. But some officials were wary of President Donald J. Trump’s motives, arguing that his interest in the origins of the pandemic was either to deflect blame from his administration’s handling of it or to punish China.

Current officials say the central goal of the new intelligence push is to improve preparations for future pandemics. As a result, Mr. Biden’s message this week was calibrated to leave open the possibility of future cooperation with China.

The White House’s frustration with China has risen after its announcement this week that Beijing would not participate in additional investigations by the World Health Organization. A Biden administration official said if the new inquiry failed to yield an answer, it would be because China had not been transparent.

But the administration is not trying to isolate China, and instead attempting to walk a careful line between pressuring Beijing to cooperate and demonstrating that in its absence, the United States will intensify its own investigation.

Administration officials also believe the new inquiry and Chinese obstruction of the World Health Organization will create the opportunity for stepped-up intelligence cooperation with allies.

Allies have been providing information since the beginning of the pandemic, one official said. But some, including British intelligence services, have been skeptical of the lab leak theory. Others, including Australia, have been more open to it.

As members of the so-called Five Eyes partnership, Britain and Australia already broadly share intelligence with the United States. But the new intelligence review, along with growing frustration with China’s failure to cooperate with the World Health Organization, could prod allies to focus more on the question of the lab leak.

A British official declined to comment. A request for comment from the Australian government was not immediately returned.

In his announcement on Wednesday, Mr. Biden said two intelligence agencies believed the virus most likely occurred naturally, while at least one other favored the theory that it leaked accidentally from a lab in China. None had high confidence in their assessments, the president noted.

In a statement on Thursday, Amanda J. Schoch, the spokeswoman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said the intelligence agencies had come together around the two likely scenarios, but there were so far no high-confidence assessments of the virus’s origins.

“The U.S. intelligence community does not know exactly where, when or how the Covid-19 virus was transmitted initially,” Ms. Schoch said.

While 18 agencies make up the intelligence community, only a handful have been major players in assessing the likely origins of the virus. Most of the broader intelligence community, including the C.I.A. and the Defense Intelligence Agency, believe there is not yet sufficient information to draw a conclusion, even with low confidence, about the origins.

The intelligence community “continues to examine all available evidence, consider different perspectives, and aggressively collect and analyze new information to identify the virus’s origins,” Ms. Schoch said.

 

 

[BabaYaga 15212]

17 hours ago, bolverk said:

If China isn't cooperating, then there are fewer options for the international science community to work with. Biden has therefore called on our intelligence community to "re-double their efforts" using whatever tools they have at their disposal. They have been ordered to issue a report within 90 days, which Biden says he'll make public. That's the status.

I have my doubts.  The IC's work in the shadows.  If this is purely based upon the current existence of evidence, do you really think they are going to find any after the CCP came down from the mountain and went scorched earth?  It's been sterilized.  

I think Faucci is "coming around" because people are starting to connect the dots about him.  He is THE godfather of GOF research.  He went behind Trump's back to re-initiate this research after Obama shut it down.  There is zero doubt he knows what was going on.  He was the one that gave the greenlight for the latest $3.7M grant for the lab.  There is no GOF research going on anywhere that he is not intimately aware of or consulting for.  I think he's trying to save his own ass.  To reveal his true relationships with this lab and specific research would be political poison for Biden.  Trump's already gone, and should have fired his ass from day one.  But now he's still around and a real problem for the current administration if these revelations come out.  

As for China - There needs to be overt political pressure from the worldwide scientific community for direct access to the labs, samples, data, etc.  We know China destroyed all the lab samples & data, but with the years of research and monies spent, does anything really think there are not copies?  We need to be able to extricate Chinese scientists (and their families) so they can have frank and candid discussions about what really happened without fear of death as happened to the earlier people that spoke out.  

[BabaYaga 15212]

17 hours ago, Anastasis said:

Still waiting for someone to give a plausible and concrete explanation, maybe with some basis in actual reality-based evidence, as to how this highly transmissible virus got from a cave in Yunnan where the relevant bat species interact to Wuhan without leaving any trace or trail along the way.  

I'd go one step further.  Forget the caves for a second.  Where were the bats at the time of the initial breakout?  It was winter.  They weren't even in the caves that were 500+ miles away?  So we can say with almost 100% certainty there were not bats at the wet markets.  

[BabaYaga 15212]

17 hours ago, Anastasis said:

handing out some 69 hour banninations would clear this shit up pretty quick. 

[wildcat09 29258]

19 minutes ago, BabaYaga said:

I have my doubts.  The IC's work in the shadows.  If this is purely based upon the current existence of evidence, do you really think they are going to find any after the CCP came down from the mountain and went scorched earth?  It's been sterilized.  

I think Faucci is "coming around" because people are starting to connect the dots about him.  He is THE godfather of GOF research.  He went behind Trump's back to re-initiate this research after Obama shut it down.  There is zero doubt he knows what was going on.  He was the one that gave the greenlight for the latest $3.7M grant for the lab.  There is no GOF research going on anywhere that he is not intimately aware of or consulting for.  I think he's trying to save his own ass.  To reveal his true relationships with this lab and specific research would be political poison for Biden.  Trump's already gone, and should have fired his ass from day one.  But now he's still around and a real problem for the current administration if these revelations come out.  

As for China - There needs to be overt political pressure from the worldwide scientific community for direct access to the labs, samples, data, etc.  We know China destroyed all the lab samples & data, but with the years of research and monies spent, does anything really think there are not copies?  We need to be able to extricate Chinese scientists (and their families) so they can have frank and candid discussions about what really happened without fear of death as happened to the earlier people that spoke out.  

...are you seriously alleging that Fauci was weaponizing viruses for China?